The Mash Mafia Barbell Affiliate Team is growing, and I love it. My goal is to help these gyms flourish. To find our more, click on the link:
The Online Weightlifting Team is over one year old! That is a dream come true! Find out more about our Team below:
Mash Mafia Online Weightlifting Team
Who Are You?
Last week at the Barbell Mastermind, one of the sessions was about the branding of your company. A lot of us think about logos, colors, and fonts when we think branding. If that is what you are doing, then that is a fail. To be honest, I have never intentionally branded anything or even thought about the topic, so that is a fail on my part.
Instead of the business catch phrase “branding”, we should all sit back and think about what we are doing. We need to ask ourselves some serious questions. What do we want our companies, gyms, and teams to represent? What do we want to come to people’s minds when they think about what we are doing? These are serious questions that we need to answer.
Branding is how the world perceives your organization. I am not just talking to business owners. I am talking to coaches of teams. No matter what we think, our team or organization is making a statement to the world. Personally I want to focus that statement on something positive, empowering, and mostly glorifying to God. I don’t think that I have focused on this enough, but I am totally ready to tackle this massive step now.
The first step was asking a lot of my partners and athletes one important question. What does the Mash Mafia mean to you? Truly I wasn’t sure what I would get, but the answers brought tears to my eyes. Almost unanimously, they said “family”. That’s exactly what I have wanted from the beginning, but I didn’t know that they all felt that way.
I had no idea that one could spark such a high-powered feeling like “family” from their business. Content is the key to painting the picture in the world’s brain. Videos, short clips, and articles should all say the same message. I want the world to know that I care about all of my athletes from the tone of my articles and videos. Some coaches want to project a sense of “win at all cost”, and that is fine too. The important principle is to remain constant in the message.
It’s not that hard once you have clearly defined the message. I made the decision about a year ago to focus more online. I wanted my online athletes to experience what my onsite athletes had experienced for years. I wanted them to have a coach that cared about them as a person and an athlete. This has been a massive challenge, but one I have enjoyed immensely.
I am still working on bring my online clients that personal experience. The distance obviously makes it a little tougher, but I am making some major decisions right now to improve this aspect. I will say that it is super humbling when one of your online brothers or sisters writes you and email asking about life. I have had people ask about careers, family, and most importantly my relationship with Christ. Awesome!
When they ask these questions that is a win. Now keep in mind I am not talking about financial wins. You should think of your brand or world perception as your “art”. I want the world to perceive me as their onsite coach. That’s a big challenge. When people are asking me these personal questions, I know that I am getting my message across. I want to help all of these people become better athletes and better humans. I have never just wanted to make great athletes. I want to affect the people that come to me for the rest of their lives.
Once you have chosen your message, now it is time to make it beautiful. Everything that you put out should be wrapped in a beautiful way. This is the part that I am going to work on starting today. I can put out some content better than most people, but I haven’t always taken the time to make it beautiful. I am meeting with my creative team today to change all of that.
Your life work is in reality the picture that you paint for the world. It is the art that you will leave behind when this life is over. There is a picture in my head of the way I want it all to look that my creative team are going to help make reality. This project will be a lifetime of perfecting. I am talking about everything from my facility, to me website, and my social media. I want the look to portray my message in a beautiful way.
Anyone that knows me realizes that this project is out of my toolbox. I am not artistic at all. Luckily my wife and our friend Mark are amazing. They have the unique ability to conceptualize thoughts and desires with art and images. Who knows!!! I just know that they are amazing, and I am extremely thankful to have them in my life.
I hope that this helps you all. This message pertains to athletes as well. As an athlete you should ask yourself how people perceive you. You are sending a message out to the world as well. The better you become, the bigger the message will be, so start thinking about that now.
Remember this: Our actions are only as awesome as the world’s perception of those actions!