"In the confrontation between the rock and the stream, the stream always wins. Not by strength, but by perseverence." H.J.B.

Thanks Alexandra C. for finding this quote.

I remember when I opened my first business. I was 20 years old and it was the recession of '90. I had just finished my enlistment from the Air Force and, more importantly to those close to me, I was giving up a steady paycheck. My family, doing what families do in their version of support, warned me of impending doom. These warning were in the form of "what if" scenarios... "what if you can't make your rent?" and "what job will you fall back on if this doesn't work out?" I had no real answer except for the fact that I KNEW to my core that I would not fail. I had no real understanding of just how hard I had to work to not only not fail but to succeed but I gladly did everything it took. Do you have a similar story? Do people close to you give you "warnings" to protect you from getting hurt? Do you believe in your core you will do everything it takes to succeed?

BTW - that business is still running.

Post comments to share your story.


Enjoy this great LONG video from Tony Robbins about belief systems.

Deanna from Crossfit Zone is training a couple of marathoners and was able to generate some local press. Nice segment Deanna!

James at Kaizen CrossFit in Las Vegas gets some great press during an in-studio news broadcast. James worked with a publicist and was smart enough to negotiate a really low 90 day trial period where the company had to get some exposure for James within that time frame for him to consider them long term. Pretty smart.

BWOD
Call a publicist and negotiate a similar deal.

Check this video and give he some props.

http://www.kvbc.com/Global/category.asp?C=151358&nav=menu107_7_4_2

I get asked the question "what's the one thing I should do for my business?" and the answer is... complicated. If you run your business looking for one secret that, if found, will solve all your future problems you're going to have a tough time. All professionals these days (YES - that's you!) are constantly educating and re-educating themselves because times and business challenges change. And so must you.

In my opinion, and over 10 years working in a similar fashion with a multitude of businesses, the answer to a well run business is an "and" answer. Meaning this, when searching for meaningful tools to affect change try to not look for "one" or the "other" or "either" but search for "and." You should do a barbell cert AND an olympic lifting cert. You should try Zone AND Paleo. You should read GOOD TO GREAT AND THE E-MYTH.

Does this make sense?

So if you've been reading this blog and ONLY this blog, well, time to mix up. It's o.k., I know you'll be back!

Linked below are some affiliates that you could ontact to get some of their wisdom. All have built a great CrossFit business and may have something to offer you in way of guidence and expertise.

Rob and Nikki at CrossFit NorCal
Skip at Mt. Baker Crossfit
Jeremy at CrossFit Central
Patty at CrossFit Vancouver

If you contact them please be respectful of their time... they're running a business!

Nice job Luke and Najla from CrossFit Scottsdale.

Take a look at their LONG news report on their Crossfit Kids program. Did you pay the kids to say all that good stuff?

Keep It Simple Stupid... yeah, I said it, so what??!?!

I have a feeling, and I could be way off, but with a lot of information going around lately about marketing postcards, business plans, demographic targeting and more it's easy to lose the point. The reason we do this is to SERVE OUR CLIENTS. The following are the top 9 tips (and reminders how) to help you keep it simple... stupid.

1. Be an AMAZING coach - watch videos, attend community college classes, seek a mentor, go to at least 2 certs a year even if you already have all your certs - get a refresher.
2. Know your clients, not just their name - Understand their P.O.G.O.
3. Start/end class on time - be 5 -7 minutes early to "greet" your clients.
4. Coach appropriately - clients 1-3 months are "children". 4-6 months are "teenagers" and 6 months or longer are "adults"... don't confuse one with the other. This doesn't mean standards but pushing.
5. 10 business cards - have them on you when you leave your house and don't go home with any left.
6. Enroll - don't sell, discount or plead.
7. Be your own best billboard - Wear your CrossFit affiliate shirt (God, it better be a fresh one) and look like you are actually a CrossFitter... but don't try to intimidate so no muscle T's.
8. Clean Gym - spend $200 a month getting a professional service and between visits train your clients to pick up after themselves.
9. Smile - meeting new people, answering the phone and even coaching. This shit is fun!

Post thoughts to comments.

Enjoy the video:

How do you handle incoming phone calls? Are you sure it's as effective as possible from your potential clients perspective?

BWOD
Review your phone procedure. If lacking, use what you learned in this video below.

CFLA: THE BIZ - 5 Operations tips from Jennifer from CrossFit LA - The BIZ on Vimeo.

So this story actually happend to me... and I wonder how many people can relate 'cause they may be doing the same stuff...

There is a coffee shop (not a coffee lover, pretend you might be) a block away from my house. It's one shop of only two so it's not a chain that is recognizable but I go because they serve the best espresso in town. It's also not Starbucks which is good. I go at least five times per week to relax, have an espresso, and leave 20 minutes later after reading some pages in any book I might have my nose in.

A couple of weeks ago I ordered my drink and, in European tradition, a small glass of water is served with it. Not today. So I asked the guy (barista #1) behind the register for some water and he said, "yeah, there's some right next to you. Help yourself." Now, to his credit there WAS ice water and glasses two steps to my right. And I'm sure he thought he was being helpful by telling me how to help myself. But the point is he had every opportunity to give exceptional service RIGHT THERE. See, the water was the same distance to his left.

Every time I see him I get pissy. I realize it, hey, I'm human. So today I went in and another person made my order and provided a full glass of water and placed it next to my espresso without me asking anything. I complemented him on doing so 'cause other people haven't done that in the past. This second barista said "not giving water with an espresso is like not giving ice with an iced tea. It's not a complete order."

I know, I know. It's just coffee.

But in days where jobs are vanishing faster than beer at a college party being a "get bye" isn't going to cut it.

BWOD

Look closely at your business. Are you providing service like barista #1 or #2.

Post any thoughts to comments. Share with any affiliate who may need to wake up as well.

And watch this video and learn how to really give an amazing experience from a CAB DRIVER!

Which one resonates with you and why?

Post to comments:

"The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."
- Carlos Castaneda

"My experience indicates that most people who've accumulated a great deal of wealth haven't had that as their goal at all. Wealth is only a by-product, not the original motivation."
- Michael Milken

"It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining."
- Stephen Hawking

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
- Charles Darwin

From time-to-time people we know... people really close to us, like our best friend or our spouse or even parents will tell you that you CAN'T do the thing you've set as your goal. I've personally had this happen to me several times and know how hard it is to NOT listen to those people. I've gone as far as not talking to specific people in my life because I knew what they thought was helpful, warning me about the difficulties of said endeavor, would actually erode my confidence. It's not easy, believe me, to tell your mother "Mom, I can't talk to you about this because you won't understand..." but it IS necessary to preserve the sanctity of positive energy around you when you're getting something off the ground.

Does this happen to you?

Tell us, how do you deal with it?

Post to comments.

Wow! This video is so good you'll have to watch it 2xs... if you want to find different ideas to get your name out there.

BWOD:

Watch this video 2x (yes - 2x - because there are so many images you have to re-watch to make sure you get everything) then dedicate at least 30 minutes to brainstorm as many new ideas to advertise. Post to comments


Note: don't judge yourself too harshly, just grab a yellow pad, a pen and have fun. The person with the most ides win

More Seth Godin Brilliance. Thanks Seth.

You might not be as permanently stuck in a rut as you think. The rut you're in isn't permanent, nor is it perfect. There are certainly less perfect ruts, but there may be better ones as well. The certain thing is that you can change everything...

Buy a competitor
Sell to a competitor
Publish your best work for free online
Close your worst-performing locations
Open a new branch in a high-traffic location
Hire the best salesperson away from the competition
Join the competition
Host a conference for your competitors
Connect your best customers and organize a tribe
Fire the 80% of your customers that account for 20% of your sales
Start a blog
Start a digital bootstrap business on the weekends
While looking for a job, spend 40 hours a week volunteering and freelancing for good causes
Go on tour and visit your best customers in person
Answer the customer service line for a day
Learn to be a killer presenter
Let the most junior person in the organization run things for a day
Delete your website and start over with the simplest possible site
Call former employees and ask for advice
Move to Thailand
Listen to audio books in your car instead of the radio
Sell your cash cow division to the competition and invest everything in the new thing
Find more products for your existing customers to buy
Become a gadfly and tell the truth about your industry
Quit your job
Move your operations to another city
Become a vegan
Have all meetings in a room with no chairs, and everyone wears a bathrobe over their clothes
Open your offices only four hours a day
Open your offices 24 hours a day for a week
Find every project that is near the danger zone (in terms of p&l or deadlines) and cancel it, no appeals
Go for a walk during lunch
Get an RSS reader and read a lot more blogs
Go offline for longer than you thought possible
Write five thank you notes every day
Stop sending spam
Do your work somewhere else. Set up your chiropractic table at the mall
Have everyone at work switch offices
Give your most valuable possessions to a stranger
Go see live music
Start a company scrapbook and take daily notes
Hire a firm to make a documentary about your organization
Buy some art
Make some art.
Do the work.

Why be a man when you can be a success?
- Bertolt Brecht

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
- Bill Cosby

What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
- Bob Dylan

This post is courtesy of Kevin Cherrick in Crossfit North Scottsdale

Thanks for contributing.

(taken from 37 signals)

"via Signal vs. Noise by Matt on 5/5/09
Why don’t we just call plans what they really are: guesses. Unless you’re a fortune teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy. There are just too many factors that are out of your hands: market conditions, competitors, customers, the economy, etc. Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can’t actually control.

In fact, you might as well change the name of your business plans to business guesses, your financial plans to financial guesses, and your strategic planning to strategic guesses. Do that and you’ll probably start putting a lot less weight into those things.

Ian MacMillan, Wharton professor of innovation and entrepreneurship, and Rita Gunther McGrath, a professor at Columbia Business School, believe “the only plan is to learn as you go.” They say 1) conventional approaches and planning don’t work when you’re trying to get into new spaces, 2) assumptions are what get most companies into trouble, and 3) it’s not failure that companies need to avoid, but rather “failing expensively.”

Here’s an example: You want to get money for a project. You put together a PowerPoint deck of 100 slides with all these back-up details and all these spreadsheets. You go to whoever has the resources and you make this big pitch. And then they say, “Okay.”

You set off, and in two or three months you discover that the market wasn’t exactly what you thought, and the service delivery requirements aren’t exactly what you thought, and maybe the product needs to be tweaked. Now, you’ve got this huge commitment that you’re supposed to live up to. So the first dilemma that we see in companies that causes them to fail so systematically is this presumption that you can be right in a world of massive uncertainty. That leads to these kinds of dysfunctional behaviors.

Great way to put it there: Stop presuming you can be right in a world of massive uncertainty. The only plan you should make is to plan on improvising."

BWOD
Determine if you are on track for your yearly goal. We're 4 months in to the year... are you 1/3 of the way to where you want to be for 2009? If not, what are you going to do about it? If you are, what have you done right?

Post to comments.

Enjoy this video on not letting things slide.

Do you maintain a site with a blog roll that you post your daily WODs? Well, if you do and you're like us, there is a section to give some of your own experience or perspective on a certain topic. We've found this is an amazing way to support your community through the sharing of ideas. It's also a great way to give people who AREN'T YET your clients to get to know you before they come in.

The following video addresses how to use that blog as a tool correctly.

Post to comments way that you may use your blog to generate comments differently than what is pointed out.

BTW - this week we're hosting a seminar at our box, completely sold out, so I will returning to posting next week.

This was on Seth Godin's Blog... powerful stuff.

What you say, what you do and who you are

We no longer care what you say.

We care a great deal about what you do.

If you charge for hand raking but use a leaf blower when the client isn't home
If you sneak into an exercise class because you were on the wait list and it isn't fair cause you never get a bike
If you snicker behind the boss's back
If you don't pay attention in meetings
If you argue with a customer instead of delighting them
If you copy work and pass it off as your own
If you shade the truth a little
If you lobby to preserve the unsustainable status quo
If you network to get, not to give
If you do as little as you can get away with

...then we already know who you are.

Thanks Seth for holding us accountable!!

How do you handle yourself right before or right after a group class?

The following video is designed for business people who go to "networking events" and they suddenly become "that guy"... you might recognize him, business card in hand, one eye looking past you as he pretends to listen, er, talk with you. What I've found is that a lot of people, when having to deal with a lot of interesting people at one place at one time like a CrossFit group WOD, sometime do this. If not you, then maybe one of your coaches.

BWOD:

Video some of your coaches before and after class to see if they are "that guy." If you're brave, ask someone to do it for you but tell them to do it without warning so you're not "on."

These aren't laws or even rules. The following list is some items I've found in working on small businesses and they fit really well with owning a CrossFit gym.

1. You take a vacation and your business does better than if you were there.
2. You get home early to your family.
3. Servicing your clients doesn't mean "you" service all of them.
4. At least one member of your staff's pay is commensurate with a local doctor or lawyer.
5. Other people on your team find a quick and effective solution to a problem that arrises.

BWOD:
Ask yourself if you get a YES for each question.

Scoring:
5 Yeses - You have a business not just a job. Look to expand soon.
4 Yeses - You're looking more like a business every day.
3 Yeses - You're on the cusp. Don't stop your momentum.
2 Yeses - You probably find it hard to get to work.
1 Yes - You should get out now or recommit to improving

Watch this video where Seth Godin talks about the fitness industry.

You decide.