Last night, the TwoBrain family reached a new milestone.
Tate Stewart and Jeff Burlingame graduated from our Mentor Training Program!
For years, I’ve been watching our little corner of the fitness industry and its evolution. I recorded my thoughts in three books, tracked every scrap of data I could find, and built the plan that we now call The Incubator.
After watching the successes (and, sadly, failures) of thousands of gyms, I know that mentorship is the only path to success. You can read books, ask questions in Facebook Groups, watch videos, even take online courses…but without external guidance, you won’t take action. Neither will I: my mentors change as my businesses evolve, but their collective presence remains constant.
In fact, I’ve tried to do this every other way: I’ve sold books, seminars and online programs. NONE will work without an excellent mentor to say, “Do this one thing today. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Obviously, I take this very seriously.
One of the first blog posts I wrote when I founded Two-Brain Business was Consultants vs Mentors. I was already asking myself, “What qualifies anyone to become a mentor?” and “How can I make a mentor even MORE effective?” These questions come from the rising crop of consultants in the CrossFit world…and also from the constant “Impostor Syndrome” that many founders experience.
I took those questions to Jay Williams, who has also had many mentors over his lifetime, and we started framing in the first stages of training. I invited two members of the TwoBrain Family to form our first class: Jeff Burlingame and Tate Stewart.
Six months later, they’re more ready than any mentor has ever been.
(The requirements for our training process are outlined here.)
It’s been a very challenging six months for each of them. But today, they stand before us as the best mentors ever trained in the fitness industry. They’re certainly far more prepared than I was when I did my first seminar in 2010.
You can hear Jeff’s qualifications–and learn a LOT–from this podcast.
You can listen to Tate’s philosophies on leadership and hardest lessons learned on this episode.
Jeff and Tate are the first successful candidates in a new tradition. Why do we train more mentors? Those two great parents of innovation: necessity and opportunity.
First, we need more mentors at TwoBrain. But we also need to diversify our knowledge portfolio. Jeff and Tate bring breadth to the depths of our program.
Second, as dozens of TwoBrain gym owners reach their “perfect day” levels of income and free time, they recognize the opportunity to help entrepreneurs in their own communities. As gym owners, we learn FAST–I spoke about that in Leading Outside The Box–and that means we have a beautiful opportunity to help the accountants, hairstylists and lawyers who visit our gyms. Some of the mentors-in-training in our program aren’t focused on gym mentorship at all; they see the broader vision of helping entrepreneurs. I’m floored by their care and persistence.
If you talk to Tate or Jeff this week, you’ll be floored by THEIR care and persistence. These men are successful not because they know the super squirrel marketing program. They’re successful because of their care and persistence.
These are the “two brains” of two brain: work and love. First with the head, then with the heart. First as student, then as teacher. And they have MUCH to teach us.
Welcome, Jeff and Tate, to mentorship!
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