“Today, I’m going to walk you through an exciting new experiment we’re running for the next six weeks—our 6-week sprint. This is a new approach to group coaching that focuses on improving NOB attainment and speed to NOB for our yellow avatar clients. We’ve learned a lot from previous tests, and I’m excited to share how we’re adapting and what this means for you as mentors.”

“In September, we tested small-group mentorship with five cohorts. Unfortunately, the results were inconsistent, and while some groups saw improvement, others went backward. In some cases, the clients didn’t pair well, or I selected the wrong clients. The truth is, the green clients—those already succeeding—did well in a group setting, but the yellow clients didn’t improve at the speed we hoped. So, we’re pivoting.”

"Our goal now is to support yellow avatar clients more effectively—especially in terms of taking action and improving their NOB, while also providing value to all our clients during this test phase."

“We’ve learned that the green clients—those who are already doing well—don’t need a change in their model. They thrive with the current 1:1 mentorship. But yellow avatars need something different: more touchpoints and more accountability. The goal is to increase speed to NOB for these clients, and that’s where the group coaching model comes in.”

“In our previous test, we found that small-group coaching helped some clients, but it didn’t necessarily lead to better results. This time, we’re refining the test: no more small-group mentorship. Instead, we’re providing more frequent Office Hours to give yellow avatars more chances for touchpoints and coaching."

“This is a 6-week sprint that will be a bonus for clients—not a permanent change. The goal is to help yellow avatars take action, reduce mentor-client communication issues, and provide more value.”

“Starting March 17, we’ll run three new Office Hours every week to give clients more access to us and provide more support in real-time. We’re making sure the schedule fits across time zones: one for Europe, one for Australia, and one for North America. Plus, we’ll continue our rotating Office Hours on Wednesdays.”

• Structure of Office Hours:
• Q&A Coaching: A space for clients to ask questions, identify their Next Best Step, and receive coaching.
• Work Period: Clients can use the time to work through tasks with guidance available.
• Burning Fires: A space to address urgent challenges and get quick feedback.

Goals for the Test:

1. Action from Yellow Avatars: We’ll track attendance and compare it with their NOB to see if these extra touchpoints help them take more action.
2. Reduced Messages to Mentors: This will help alleviate some of the rising concerns around mentor-client communication. Never give out your cell number; clients should be directed to Office Hours or email for communication.
3. Rate Leveling: Some clients have been left behind on growth rates. This sprint will provide a way for them to catch up and benefit from more frequent coaching.
4. Coaching and Accountability: Providing more frequent touchpoints to help yellow avatars gain the accountability they need to move forward.

Quickcast: "The Power of Proven Tools: Why Following the Toolkit Drives Predictable Success"

**Introduction (3–5 minutes):**

“You’ve heard it a hundred times: 'There's more than one way to skin a cat.' But in our mentorship practice, there’s only one way to drive predictable, repeatable success—and that’s by following the proven strategies in our toolkit.”

“We’ve refined our approach through trial and error, through working with nearly 3000 gyms. That’s a lot of data. The methods we recommend aren’t random—they’re the product of years of testing and experience.”

"While new ideas can be exciting, our job as mentors is not to offer something different or untested to our clients. It’s to help them apply what’s already been proven to work in a way that drives predictable outcomes."

The Myth of the Perfect Idea

“It’s tempting to share the latest 'shiny object' you heard about in the Tinker program, on outside podcasts, or in books. But those ideas are unproven, and often just variations on strategies that aren’t fully tested or proven in the real world.

**Example Story 1:** Bring a Friend *Day* vs. Bring a Friend *Week*.

- “We’ve found that ‘Bring a Friend Day’ works because it creates urgency, limits the time frame, and focuses the gym owner on conversion. A week just creates delays, more work, and a larger window for losing potential leads. A day does what a week doesn’t—it converts faster.”

- **Example Story 2:** Rate Increase Letters.

- “The rate increase letter we provide in the Growth Toolkit is the result of years of feedback, refinement, and testing. It’s not about creating your own version. While a mentor’s individual letter might seem like a good idea, it’s not backed by the same level of data. It’s a roll of the dice.”

“There are many versions of pretty good but only one version of excellence.”

**Part 2: "Why New Ideas Aren’t Always Better" (12 minutes)**

“When you’re working with clients in the Growth or Stage 1 phases, they need predictability. They need tools that are proven to work, not variations of ideas that haven’t been fully tested yet.”

The Progression From Stage 1 to Growth.

- “In Stage 1, gym owners are just starting out, and they don’t have the bandwidth to experiment with new ideas. They need clear guidance, a step-by-step plan that’s been honed over years. Anything else just leads to more distractions.”

- **Picture your staff walking down a road toward a finish line. Every new thing you add is a step backward – they have to learn it, screw it up, and do it well before it becomes a step forward. You can’t eliminate these backward steps, but you should minimize them. The less you change, the faster they go. Novelty creates friction.”

“Our job isn’t to reinvent the toolkit or come up with new ideas—it’s to deliver what’s already working even better.”

"Delivering Consistency Over Innovation" (10 minutes)**

“Our toolkit has already been refined, tested, and proven across hundreds and thousands of clients. It’s tempting to think that new or 'cutting-edge' ideas are the best solution, but our job is to apply what's in front of us with excellence.”

Tinker Ideas vs. Proven Success.

“The Tinker program is a laboratory for ideas—some of those ideas will make it into our toolkit, but only after rigorous testing. Until then, we need to stick with the processes that have been proven to drive results, not the unproven experiments.”

“It’s not boring to follow proven strategies—it’s what gives our clients the results they expect.”

**Conclusion (3–5 minutes):**

“As mentors, we don’t need

Quickcast: Coaching vs Mentorship

In this quickcast, I’ll explain the difference between coaching and mentorship, and why it matters for our approach as mentors.

**Coaching** is about helping people execute a model or strategy with precision and skill. Coaches focus on **tactics**, removing roadblocks and obstacles, and ensuring the client is doing the right thing at the right time. A good coach can execute a proven strategy or model with **virtuosity**, ensuring clients make faster progress without wasting time.

On the other hand, **mentorship** is about **strategic guidance** and **long-term planning**. Mentors help clients navigate the journey ahead, providing insights into broader concepts, building a path forward, and helping clients avoid common mistakes. While a mentor might help clients with high-level decisions, they don't get involved in every detail of execution. They focus on the **big picture**, helping clients avoid blind spots, and offering connections and resources to fill in the gaps.

In our current model, we’re not in the mentorship business, we’re in the **coaching** business. Our job is to help gym owners **apply** the model we’ve developed to grow their gyms effectively. The toolkit we provide has been tested and refined through years of work, and it’s our job to **help clients follow it precisely**.

That means, as mentors, we **don’t create new models** or **explore untested strategies**. Instead, we deliver the **proven, step-by-step actions** within our toolkit, and we help clients execute with **speed** and **precision**.

**So, when a mentor comes across a new idea or strategy (like from Tinker, other podcasts, or books), they should be very cautious about introducing it to a client without evidence that it’s been tested and refined in the field.** For example, the “Bring a Friend Day” is a proven strategy that works. We don’t need to reinvent it—introducing a “Bring a Friend Week” may sound interesting, but there’s no evidence that it’s more effective. Instead, it just adds complexity.

This is where we need to shift the focus: it’s not about introducing new ideas, it’s about helping clients execute **what already works** in a way that delivers consistent and predictable outcomes.

Ultimately, the most important thing we can do as mentors is to **stop reinventing the wheel** and focus on refining and applying the model we’ve already established.

Remember, **we are coaches, not mentors.** Our job is to help clients apply a proven model, **not invent new ones**. Stick to the toolkit, deliver it with precision, and get clients the results they’ve invested in.

In this episode of Help Best, I talk about learned helplessness—how it develops in mentorship relationships and how we can prevent it. When clients become overly dependent on their mentors for every step, they stop progressing independently. Our job as mentors isn't to do the work for them; it's to guide them in adopting the Simple Six model, helping them overcome internal barriers, and empowering them to sustain their own success.

We speed up their adoption of the model by providing tools, instructions, and mentorship—not by solving every problem for them. Long-term success comes when clients can run and grow their gyms independently. Our role is to hold them accountable and coach them through essential habits, like focus, without creating a dependency on us.

Ultimately, mentorship should help clients become self-sufficient entrepreneurs capable of scaling and thriving on their own terms. Learned helplessness occurs when we let them off the hook for responsibilities that build resilience and success.

Hope this episode helps you reflect on your role as a mentor and inspires new ways to foster independence in your clients.

Podcast Summary: Turning Questions Around - Being the Mirror

Welcome to Help Best, the weekly quickcast where I share skills and tactics to help our mentor team guide gym owner clients to success. In today’s episode, I’m talking about an incredibly powerful coaching tactic: turning the question around or being the mirror.

I start with a personal story about a pivotal moment in my life. Ten years ago, I was considering a big move but felt unsure. A friend asked me a simple but profound question: "What could they say that would make you stay?" That question made me realize there was nothing that would keep me where I was. It gave me the clarity I needed to make a difficult decision. Fast forward to today, when I faced a similar question about staying on as CEO of my company. The same question rocked me again, prompting deep reflection.

At a recent Strategic Coach meeting, I noticed that the coach never answered questions directly but instead turned questions around on the person asking. This technique—acting as a mirror—helps clients discover their own answers and make stronger, more confident decisions.

In this episode, I explain how you can use this strategy in your mentorship calls. Often, the best mentors aren’t there to provide answers; they’re there to help clients uncover the truth they already know deep down. I share seven powerful questions you can use, each tied to specific challenges gym owners frequently face:

"What would happen if you didn't make this change?"

Example: Hesitating to increase prices despite low profitability.

"What would success look like if you solved this problem?"

Example: Retaining clients after a short-term challenge ends.

"What is stopping you from taking action right now?"

Example: Avoiding hiring because of fear of finding the right person.

"If you could wave a magic wand, what would be different in your business?"

Example: Wanting more time to focus on strategy instead of operations.

"How would your future self thank you for making this decision today?"

Example: Debating whether to introduce semi-private training.

"What do you know deep down that you're afraid to admit?"

Example: Knowing a tough conversation with an underperforming staff member is needed.

"What is the smallest first step you can take right now?"

Example: Overwhelmed by marketing but starting with scheduling one post.

I close with a challenge for you: on your next mentorship call, test this mirroring strategy. Come prepared with a few of these questions and see how your client’s mindset shifts as they find their own answers.

Being the mirror can change lives, and it can change businesses. Let's keep helping gym owners succeed, one powerful question at a time.

Summary:

In this episode, I explain how the Two-Brain Avatar chart helps mentors identify and overcome behaviors that slow or accelerate a client's progress toward their Net Owner Benefit (NOB) goal. While the curriculum itself works for everyone given enough time, the timeline depends on how quickly a client does the work.

I break down the key avatars—like the Eager, Buddy, and Cynic—and explain how each type requires different mentoring strategies. Great mentors don't change the curriculum; they adapt their approach to fit the client. This chart is our tool for speeding up client outcomes.

If you want your clients to reach their goals faster, this episode is for you.

The Simple Six is the Two-Brain Business mentorship operating system.

After a client has built the basics in Stage 1 and created their metrics dashboard in Stage 2, we use those metrics to determine their Next Best Step.

https://vimeo.com/899043103/8f17186a69?share=copy

Here are the steps:

Look at their metrics and their targets in the Dashboard.

Find their biggest gap (current metrics vs target)

Scroll down the Toolkit to find a list of Projects to improve that metric

Choose a Project to solve their problem

Break the Project down into Tasks (usually 3-4)

Assign the Tasks in the Dashboard.

These steps fit into the Growth Call template, right after you get them out of “story state” and focused on the present opportunities.

Podcast Summary: Lessons on Coaching from Dan Sullivan & Strategic Coach

In this episode, I share key lessons from Strategic Coach founder Dan Sullivan that will help mentors guide entrepreneurs toward greater success:

• Focus on Unique Ability: Help clients identify and amplify their greatest strengths while delegating or eliminating the rest.
• Measure Progress Backward, Not Forward: Shift focus from the future to celebrating past wins and growth (The Gap vs. The Gain).
• Prioritize Four Freedoms: Coach clients to make decisions that maximize freedom in time, money, relationships, and purpose.
• Simplify First, Then Multiply: Encourage clients to simplify their businesses by focusing on the 20% of actions driving 80% of results.
• Ask Transformational Questions: Use powerful questions to help clients clarify their vision and solve challenges, like:
• "What has to happen for you to feel happy about your progress?"
• "What’s the biggest obstacle holding you back?"
• "Who, not how, can solve this problem?"
• Create Repeatable Frameworks for Growth: Guide clients to develop predictable systems and routines for consistent progress and sustainability.

👉 These principles align with our mission to help gym owners grow their businesses while achieving balance and freedom. Listen now for actionable tips you can apply with your clients today!