0:01

Where are you at as an entrepreneu? Two-Brain founder

0:04

Chris Cooper checks in with seven signs that

0:07

you're mature and five signs that you still have

0:09

some developing to do.

0:09

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one of Arbox's experts. Hey

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everybody, it's Chris Cooper here and today I'm talking

0:58

about entrepreneurial maturity. And

1:00

this is top of mind for me right now, because

1:02

two weeks ago we certified four

1:05

brand new millionaires, like

1:07

real millionaires at Two-Brain, right? Not,

1:10

oh, I did $80,000 one month

1:12

and I'm going that's going to continue forever.

1:14

My gym is projected to make a million

1:17

dollars. Therefore I'm a millionaire. No , these are people

1:19

with real net worth.

1:21

Real gym owners with net worth of

1:23

a million dollars or more. And we certified

1:26

four of them in one day. On

1:29

that same day, we got a bad review from somebody.

1:31

It's one of only two negative reviews

1:33

we got in the entire last year,

1:36

but somebody reported that they hadn't

1:38

had a great experience in our ramp-up

1:40

program. Now the old Chris

1:43

would have fixated on that one bad

1:45

review, even with the new millionaires

1:48

and the hundreds of positive reviews that we get

1:50

every year. Even with all of the

1:52

thank you for everything messages I get in my

1:54

inbox and chat every single week,

1:57

that one negative thing would have stuck

1:59

in my brain. And I know this happens

2:01

in your gym too. And in the past,

2:03

that would have been all I could think about, but this time

2:06

I thought, Hey, if these four

2:08

people can use our systems and

2:10

take their gym from struggling to

2:12

being literally worth a million dollars

2:14

or more personally, then

2:17

the system works just fine. And

2:19

that's when I realized, holy

2:21

crap, I'm not ruminating on this problem.

2:23

Something's working here. I'm maturing as

2:25

an entrepreneur, and I've been working

2:28

on this a lot with my coach from

2:30

Level Up Coaching as well as the usual

2:32

quarter million or so that I spend every

2:34

single year on mentorship. And

2:36

when I went back into our group

2:38

at Two-Brain and I looked at our tinker group and

2:40

I looked at our growth group and the

2:42

discussions that are being had around there, even

2:45

though some of these gyms just went right back into

2:47

lockdown. Again, I'm

2:49

realizing like, wow, we are producing

2:51

some really mature entrepreneurs.

2:54

And so if you're listening to this and you're already in Two-Brain,

2:57

I hope that you're nodding along and smiling

2:59

and recognizing this maturation

3:01

in yourself. And if you're not in Two-Brain, I

3:04

hope that you recognize some points here

3:06

that you're doing right. And you recognize your

3:08

own path to maturity as an entrepreneur.

3:11

I'm also going to give you some signs that maybe

3:13

you're not as mature as you could be

3:15

yet. And keep in mind that entrepreneurial

3:18

maturity is a spectrum. It's

3:20

a process. There are some things that I'm

3:22

going to list today that I don't do

3:24

yet, but hopefully I'll do better as

3:26

I become a more mature entrepreneur. And

3:29

hopefully there's some things too, that you can say,

3:31

you know what? This won't bother

3:34

me as much, or I can start looking

3:36

at this differently. So here's some signs

3:38

that you are becoming mature as

3:40

an entrepreneur. Number one, you

3:43

take a long-term perspective and

3:45

this is one of those things that you can only get with

3:47

time. It's not something that you can read

3:49

about, but here's a great proverb to

3:51

illustrate. And this is from my

3:53

book, "Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief." Once

3:55

upon a time, there was an old

3:57

farmer who had worked his crops

3:59

for many years. One day, his

4:01

horse runs away. And when

4:03

they heard the news, his neighbors came to visit. Such

4:07

bad luck. They said, sympathetically,

4:09

you must be so sad. We'll

4:10

see, the farmer replied the

4:13

next morning. The horse returned bringing

4:15

with it two other wild horses,

4:18

how wonderful the neighbors said,

4:20

not only did your horse return, but you received

4:23

two more. What great fortune

4:25

you have. We'll see,

4:28

said the farmer. The following day,

4:30

his son tried to ride one of the untamed

4:32

horses, got thrown off and broke

4:34

his leg. The neighbors again

4:36

came to offer their sympathy for his misfortune.

4:39

Now your son can't help you with your farming.

4:41

They said, what terrible luck you have.

4:45

We'll see said the old farmer, the

4:47

following week, military officials

4:49

came to the village to conscript young

4:52

men into the army. Seeing that the son's

4:54

leg was broken, they passed them by. The

4:56

neighbors congratulated the farmer on how

4:58

well things had turned out such great news.

5:00

You must be so happy. The

5:02

man smiled to himself and said, once again,

5:05

we'll see. The lesson

5:07

here is to stop reacting to things you can't

5:09

control. I know that's easier said than

5:11

done. And again, this is a lesson that really comes

5:14

with time, but is

5:16

a sign that you're becoming more mature as

5:18

an entrepreneur when you start

5:20

to think this too shall pass,

5:22

or you start to think about like, Hey, I went through

5:24

worse stuff than this, or Hey, I

5:26

had a smaller example of this happen

5:28

to me before. And that really prepared

5:31

me for when this greater crisis

5:33

is happening. Now, for example

5:35

, I was able to draw on a bad

5:37

experience that I had when my

5:39

gym was shut down for COVID in 2020.

5:42

When I built my gym

5:43

out after I bought our building

5:45

in 2016 or 2017 , we

5:49

failed to get permission to occupy the space

5:51

from the city and it drove me bananas.

5:53

It was purely a bureaucratic problem,

5:55

not like a construction

5:58

problem. And we couldn't open

6:00

for the first week that we were in this building. And so we

6:02

had to run all of our classes outdoors

6:04

at a neighborhood park, and I had

6:06

great pictures. We had great memories. We had

6:08

taken all these pictures of the crew

6:10

together, outdoors, and we kind of

6:12

came through this whole process as

6:14

a group and everybody reminisces

6:16

about it now. And so when my gym was shut

6:19

down, I sort of had an indication

6:21

that like, I could do this, even if we're only going

6:23

to be shut down for three weeks

6:25

or as it turned out 12 months out of 14.

6:28

These small little setbacks

6:30

that you have can actually prepare you

6:32

for bigger challenges in the future. So

6:35

the second sign that you're becoming more mature

6:37

as an entrepreneur is related to the first,

6:39

and this is perspective, and

6:41

this is something that Two-Brain mentor Oskar Johed from

6:44

Sweden said to me this morning, and that is, you

6:46

never know what worse luck your

6:49

bad luck will save you from. So

6:51

you might have a little setback today, but

6:53

that little setback is actually

6:55

saving you from something else. So

6:58

, you know, a couple of weeks ago,

7:01

my gym got locked out or

7:03

the double vaccination

7:05

mandate came through in Ontario. And

7:07

so the rule was that like your clients

7:09

had to be double vaccinated to

7:11

attend. It was black and white. There was

7:13

no margin for error. And I thought, man, that's

7:15

such bad luck. Some of

7:17

my clients are not going to like this, you

7:19

know, it could affect some of my staff. And

7:22

then I saw the way that the mandates were

7:24

delivered in other provinces. And it

7:26

was the same thing, except gym

7:28

owners were given the choice whether to open

7:31

and impose

7:33

the mandate themselves or not. And

7:35

I quickly realized like, wow, those people

7:37

are actually in a worse spot than I am,

7:40

because if I agree with the mandate,

7:42

OK. But if I don't agree with it,

7:44

at least I can blame the government. Those

7:46

poor gym owners and other provinces are stuck

7:49

in the middle and they really can't win

7:51

either way. So , you

7:53

know, that perspective actually helps.

7:56

And I think that's something that you only gain in time.

7:58

Like, yeah, something kind of bad happened

8:00

to me, but it might be saving me from something even

8:03

worse, you know? And here's

8:05

some great examples. Like this is very

8:07

true with staff too. So

8:09

let's say that a staff person

8:11

does something really dumb and

8:14

you know, like they swear at a client and the client

8:16

quits, you know, that sucks.

8:19

And you wind up like removing the staff person.

8:21

That's like the third strike or, you

8:24

know , whatever they gave you a reason to remove them.

8:27

And that saves you from something bigger

8:29

later on. Like maybe they go work for another

8:31

gym and they do something even worse. Well,

8:34

sometimes you have to realize

8:36

like a small mistake now could

8:38

be saving you from something worse later. So

8:40

another sign, the third sign that you're becoming

8:42

more mature as an entrepreneur is

8:44

that you understand that there's a balance

8:47

between business concepts. So

8:50

the concepts that I'll use are the concept

8:52

of abundance and the concept of protecting

8:55

yourself, intellectual property. There's

8:57

a balance that you have to maintain there. And,

9:00

you know, we publish every single day for free. There's

9:02

podcasts. There's blog posts. You're probably

9:05

consuming Two-Brain stuff on one

9:07

or more channels. Thank you for that.

9:09

And people ask me all the time, like, how can you

9:11

give all this stuff away for free? And I said,

9:14

because knowledge doesn't make the difference. Knowledge

9:15

builds trust. It demonstrates

9:18

to you that we do know what we're doing. And

9:20

hopefully my knowledge is enough to help you make

9:22

enough money to pay for mentorship, which

9:24

will make the real difference. On the other

9:26

hand, we don't let people

9:29

copy and paste our materials. We don't

9:31

let people take our videos,

9:33

replicate them, and then sell a competing service.

9:36

There are people who say that a mindset

9:38

of abundance means that you give everything away for

9:40

free. And it would be easy for me to

9:42

just say like about those people

9:44

have never built anything were stealing or

9:46

whatever, but the reality is you have

9:48

to balance giving things away

9:51

with protecting the things that

9:53

matter most to your audience.

9:56

So entrepreneurial maturity is realizing

9:58

that there are no extremes, that there are balances.

10:01

There are dichotomies like this all

10:03

over your business that always have to be

10:05

managed instead of solved. The

10:08

fourth thing is that you know

10:10

you're maturing as an entrepreneur when you

10:12

understand that retention is more

10:14

important than sales, that eventually

10:17

in a local marketplace, you will run out

10:19

of good will. You will run out of audience.

10:21

You will run out of high value clients.

10:24

So let's say that, you know, you're running

10:27

a special discount offer and

10:29

you're getting people in really quickly, but

10:31

you're not running a great service. You're not retaining

10:33

them. They're not converting to long-

10:36

term care in your gym.

10:38

And I made this mistake early on. I had this

10:40

very low entry point

10:43

and people would come in, they would sign up, they would do

10:45

this like two day kind of intro

10:47

to CrossFit on ramp . They would be

10:49

absolutely demolished. Cause we would do like five

10:51

workouts in two days they would go home

10:53

and they would never come back. And 10 years

10:56

later, I guess that was 13

10:58

years ago now, they still

11:00

say I did CrossFit. And it wasn't for

11:02

me. Good entrepreneurs understand

11:05

that you might have 70,000.

11:07

You might have 10 million people in your city,

11:10

but not all of those people are going

11:12

to want your service. The

11:14

people who want your service are a subset

11:17

of that total and you can work

11:19

your way through them pretty quickly

11:21

and even more effective

11:23

or more impactful is that a lot of those

11:26

people know each other. So there's like

11:28

one degree of separation between your best

11:30

clients now and your future best

11:32

clients. And if you do a bad

11:34

job early on with people

11:36

who are great clients, your future great

11:38

clients are going to find out about it. Conversely,

11:41

if you do an amazing job with your best

11:43

clients right now, your future best clients are

11:45

going to find out about that too. So it's really

11:47

more important that you're great at retention

11:50

than you are at getting people in the door, turning

11:52

through them fast and basically burning through your

11:54

audience. The fifth sign that you're

11:56

becoming more mature as an entrepreneur

11:59

is that you're flexible with your service, but you're

12:01

committed to your audience. This was

12:03

a blessing that COVID lockdowns actually

12:05

gave a lot of entrepreneurs in the fitness

12:07

industry was that their audience is

12:09

loyal and they trust them and

12:11

they trust their authority and their influence

12:14

more than they care about the actual service

12:16

being provided. So for example,

12:19

while a lot of gym owners in 2019

12:21

would have said, I have the best equipment.

12:23

I have the best location. I have the best

12:26

gym setup . I have the biggest brightest

12:28

cleanest, all that went away

12:30

and the best gym owners it turned

12:33

out to be the people who had the closest

12:35

connection with their audience, not

12:38

the equipment, not the program , even,

12:40

it was the people who could connect with their audience best.

12:43

So the method became flexible, went

12:45

online. A lot of gyms introduced

12:47

like accountability or yoga or whatever.

12:50

And that didn't matter. The

12:52

service was flexible, but

12:54

you are entirely committed, focused

12:57

and rigid about protecting your audience.

13:00

The sixth sign that you're becoming more mature as

13:02

an entrepreneur is that you understand that

13:04

you can learn from your competition. And

13:06

I would just kind of stay

13:08

away from other business consultants

13:10

in the space when Two-Brain Business was a lot smaller

13:13

and their business was around the same size.

13:15

I would just ignore them. Like I wouldn't want to go

13:17

anywhere near them. And you

13:20

know, most of the time it was because they

13:22

were so different from me that I was like, oh , I

13:24

don't want to pay attention to that person. But

13:26

the reality is that you can probably

13:29

learn something from them, even

13:31

if it's just, I don't want to be like that. You

13:33

know, I've been in mastermind groups where that was the

13:35

number one lesson that I took away was

13:37

I don't want to behave like some

13:40

of these other people in the group. And then

13:42

I learned to refocus myself on

13:44

groups or mentors who were

13:46

more like the person that I wanted to be. So

13:49

you have to learn that you can learn

13:52

from your competition. You can also learn from

13:54

bad influences and you can learn from

13:56

good influences too. Two-Brain Radio

13:58

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affiliateguard.info. Another

14:24

sign that you're becoming more mature as an entrepreneur.

14:26

And this is number seven, I think. You have the discipline

14:28

to finish one thing before starting another.

14:31

And I'm getting better at this personally, but I'm still

14:33

not immune to these amazing distractions.

14:36

So this is actually really more

14:38

common in people

14:40

who are at the tinker phase of entrepreneurship, because

14:43

when you're still in the founder phase, I mean,

14:46

you got your head down, you're working, you're

14:48

grinding. Your sole focus

14:50

is like, get through

14:52

today and make a dollar. And then you get into

14:54

the farmer phase and you're

14:56

busy. Like you're focused on,

14:59

you're trying to grow your gym. You're trying to manage people.

15:01

You're trying to bring new people in. You're trying

15:03

to retain them. You're trying to build systems

15:05

so that you're not just scrambling with that for your whole life,

15:07

but like you're focused. When

15:09

you get to tinker phase, suddenly you've got

15:11

free time. You've got an enlarged

15:14

amygdala. That's constantly looking

15:16

for threats, stimulus, right?

15:19

And , you've got some money.

15:21

So you're attracted to all these ideas.

15:24

Oh, I should put money in index funds. Oh,

15:26

I should buy an Airbnb. Oh, I should be

15:28

buying crypto, should be starting another business.

15:30

Oh, I should be writing a book. And when you first

15:32

hit tinker phase, you're like, I want to do all

15:34

that by Christmas. And

15:36

so you just try to do way too much. What

15:39

you have to do is redevelop your discipline

15:42

to finish one thing before you start

15:44

the next. And that's why we tell entrepreneurs

15:47

in the tinker phase and in our tinker program

15:50

work in a 90 day sprint, You can do everything,

15:53

but you can't do it all at

15:55

once. So here's some

15:57

signs that you still have a way to go. You

15:59

know, and we all do. I'm not pointing

16:01

fingers just at you. I'm looking at myself in

16:03

the mirror here too . The first sign

16:05

is that you pay too much attention to what others

16:08

are doing. You're so fixated on them

16:10

that like it comes through in the

16:12

content that you publish, it comes through in your

16:14

message to your staff. You're talking about

16:16

them all the time instead of talking about your own

16:18

vision in your own future. The

16:20

second sign that you still have a ways to go

16:23

is you're trying to impress the wrong

16:25

people. So you're making Facebook posts, but

16:27

they're targeted at other gym owners or

16:30

, you know, you're so distracted

16:32

by what another gym owner said

16:34

in a Facebook group that you're

16:36

not paying attention to the client that's standing right

16:39

in front of you or , you

16:41

know, you're so like worried about

16:43

what other people are doing in your town

16:46

that you're not focused on like doing

16:48

the best thing for your client. Here's

16:50

a great example. When I first opened

16:52

my gym, I said to my partners, like I'm going

16:54

to take every client from that gym down the street,

16:57

I'm going to shut them down. I'm going to put them out of business. All

16:59

their clients are going to come here. That was the

17:01

wrong approach to take. But every

17:03

morning at 4:30 AM, I

17:05

would be on the second story of our gym

17:07

, looking out the window, like pressing my cheek

17:10

against the glass, kind of looking down

17:12

the street to make sure that I was open first.

17:14

Well, guess what? That didn't matter.

17:17

But I was so focused on them. I

17:19

could have been focused on making a better client

17:21

experience. You know, instead of looking out the window,

17:23

I could have been cleaning showers or something.

17:26

The third way that you know that you still have a long

17:28

ways to go, as do I, is

17:30

you still chase novelty. So you

17:33

see a new idea somewhere and

17:35

you totally like forget the

17:37

current plan that you're on. And you chase that

17:39

new idea. You know , Clubhouse,

17:42

I think was a great example of this. Back in January,

17:44

February. Gym owners had a marketing

17:46

plan. They were doing affinity marketing

17:48

in their reviews. They were getting referrals.

17:51

They were upgrading their offer. They were selling

17:53

specialty programs. They were setting up a Facebook

17:56

funnel and suddenly Clubhouse.

17:58

And now they're like two and a half hours a day listening

18:00

to this thing instead of growing their business.

18:03

And , so you really need to like, not

18:05

be distracted by novelty. Believe me, that's

18:07

a very tough one. The fourth sign

18:11

that you still have a ways to go is you make

18:13

your business a political platform. Now I don't

18:15

want to make this podcast my political platform.

18:17

So I'm not going to go too deep into this, but you

18:20

need to understand that if you want to change people's

18:22

lives, the best thing that you

18:24

can do is give them a space that is

18:26

free from politics and

18:29

all the noise that they're hearing from the media

18:31

around them. The other thing that you need

18:33

to do is stay open for 30 years, right?

18:35

Like, yes, you can wave a political

18:37

flag one time and you can,

18:40

you know, totally stand up

18:42

and shut out your beliefs on

18:44

Facebook, knowing that you'll lose half your

18:46

clients, you know , good for you. I guess

18:49

if that's what you want to do, but

18:51

you gotta know, like you're

18:53

harming your ability long term to

18:55

serve people. Probably. I

18:57

don't want to get any deeper than that, but I will say this,

19:00

I am politically active. None of my clients

19:02

know how politically active

19:04

I am or who I support or how

19:06

I'm doing it. And

19:09

that's OK because you know that's not

19:11

what I'm trying to do here. Finally. The

19:14

fifth sign that you still have a ways to go in your entrepreneurial

19:16

maturity is you're still suspicious of

19:18

success. So you see somebody who's more

19:21

successful than you, and

19:23

maybe it's your jealousy, but instead

19:25

of just a healthy skepticism,

19:28

you're pessimistic about their success. You

19:30

know, they must have stolen something

19:32

from somebody else. They must have cheated

19:35

somebody. They must have lied to become

19:37

successful. And this sucks

19:39

because the common public sees entrepreneurs

19:41

this way. If the entrepreneur is successful,

19:44

they did it on somebody else's back. Right.

19:46

Unfortunately that's like just

19:48

a product of our education system, but even

19:51

entrepreneurs aren't immune, we see

19:53

somebody like Grant Cardone and we're like,

19:55

wow, I don't want to be a billionaire because

19:57

being a billionaire means I have to be like that

20:00

or somebody else. Right? Like , you

20:02

know, Gary Vaynerchuk, I respect the guy.

20:05

I'm not his biggest fan. I don't want to be like

20:07

Gary V, guess what? He doesn't care. Right.

20:10

But if that's the only way to become

20:12

a billionaire, I don't want to do that.

20:15

So while it's good

20:17

to like maintain a healthy skepticism

20:19

about people who tell you how successful

20:21

they are. Definitely. You

20:23

also want to make sure that it's not just like

20:25

jealousy and that your

20:28

own suspicion of them is not

20:30

stopping you from being successful.

20:32

There's always a way to do this, right? There's

20:35

always a way to become successful

20:37

by practicing help first, by being

20:40

like a servant leader by

20:43

being quiet instead of outspoken,

20:45

by building your business, instead of tearing

20:47

somebody else's down, by being

20:49

tactful and polite, instead

20:52

of being a firebrand, by

20:55

going with the culture, instead of being counter-culture

20:58

, all those things are OK, you can still be

21:00

successful. It's hard to see

21:02

it when you're not a mature entrepreneur yet.

21:05

So while I do advocate

21:07

like some skepticism, you know, you should

21:09

always question authority. You

21:11

should always question success. You

21:13

should do that from a position of what can I

21:15

learn from this instead of how can I tear

21:17

this person down? Or why can I disqualify

21:20

this person's success? And

21:22

that's a great sign that you're maturing as an entrepreneur,

21:25

no matter what happens in your life,

21:27

you can learn from it. And that's a sign of maturity

21:30

too . The great thing is that real

21:33

maturity only comes from making mistakes

21:35

and spending time. That's something that I

21:37

know we're all doing. And so, as

21:39

we mature , we're all gonna

21:41

be more successful.

21:42

That was

21:44

Chris Cooper on Two-Brain Radio. Remember

21:46

to subscribe for more shows. And now

21:49

here's a final message.

21:49

Thanks for listening to Two-Brain video

21:52

. If you aren't in the gym owners, United

21:54

group on Facebook, this is my personal

21:56

invitation to join. It's the only public

21:58

Facebook group that I participate in. And

22:01

I mean there all the time with tips, tactics, and

22:03

free resources, I'd love to network

22:05

with you and help you grow your business. Join gym owners

22:07

United on Facebook.