Endurance Nation is almost one year old, and our evolution from expensive, one-on-one coaches to leaders of a community and coaches of a virtual triathlon team…is officially complete. Both Rich and Patrick have gone from a “full roster” of athletes at about $350/mo each, to exactly ZERO athletes. Why?
Through our training plans, tools, and the power of the EN community, we simply provide a better value for our TeamEN members than we ever could by working with athletes individually.
It’s been an incredible year, as anyone who has ever started up a business can imagine. But it’s been a successful year, with Endurance Nation growing from 0 to over 450 members! Along the way, we’ve learned some very valuable lessons, as our perspective on all aspects of our coaching and the coaching business evolved. The most important lesson we continue to learn is:
The 80/20 Rule in Business
- 80% of the athletes out there either “get” us or have the potential to get us if given the chance to learn more about us.
- 20% of the athletes out there either don’t, never will, or ask us to do backflips to convince them of the value and effectiveness of our ~$400/yr all-in training solution.
The Eighty Percent: All-In for Community, Training + More
We have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by being completely transparent with this group: this is who we are, this is how we will coach you, these are the tools we use to coach you, these are the videos and podcasts we’ve created for our members, please create a trial membership and ask our members yourself. In our experience, the Eighty Percent just need to find us, take us for a spin, find out what we, the coaches and the community, are about. And then they get us. They get that:
- We are very good at what we do and we have bottled all of that goodness into our training plans and ebooks.
- We work very, very hard to provide value and quality for them, everyday. You will not find two harder working coaches in the business, period.
- We recognize the incredible power of the community, guiding it to create value far above the monthly membership fee.
- We are good guys, who like to have fun, and are driven to create a successful business, to do right by our families, just as they are for theirs.
Most of this 80% want the Full Monty EN Experience: the community and power of a Team of athletes, training with a suite of proven tools and under the leadership of quality coaches.
The “stuff” we have done and created for the 80% in only ONE year:
- Assembled for our members a community of over 450 athletes, each paying to belong and contribute to the quality of that community.
- Created a forum with over 33k posts by PAYING members.
- Created The Book, a free, online 135 page training manual.
- Created the following additional electronic resources for our Team: The Four Keys DVD, The Swim eBook, The Power Training and Racing Webinar Series, 10 Hours a Week, Ironman, Half Ironman, and Off-Season Podcast Packages, and The Bike Fit Manual (coming next week).
- Created a series of Epic Experience camps, to join us in exploring their fitness outside of the typical racing box.
- Created a presence on Facebook, to help our athletes network around their training, racing, and real lives.
- Created a suite of innovative “Out-Season” training plans, achieving incredible, and documented, gains among a wide range of athletes.
- Completely rewrote all of our Ironman training plans, to include guidance for Pace, Power, and Heart Rate.
- Created a unique product, the Season Plan, offering our athletes an affordable, pre-assembled season-long training solution.
- 65 athletes have raced @ IMCDA, LP, Can, Lou, WI; 15 of these have gone under 10:50; 1 under 10:00; 6 under 10:10; 4 Kona slots, 2 podiums, and more PRs than we can remember. We also have AG winners/podiums at 70.3′s, large Olympic races. First time IM’ers negative splitting the run. BOP and MOP athletes PR’ing by over 2hrs. The list is just too long.
- We have hosted a pre-race team dinner and conducted a free Pre-Race Talk for our athletes and 60-70 others, at EACH of the following races: IMAZ, IMCDA (we raced, Patrick Kona qual’ed), IMLP, IMLou, IMWI. We will be at Kona, IMAZ, and IMFL. We were there, on the ground, getting it done for our team. Where was your coach? Where was the guy who wrote your training plan?
- When he finishes this post, Rich is on a plane to SFO where he will speak to the Forward Motion Racing Club on Sunday, recruiting for EN. Next Sunday he will attend the meetings of two LA area tri clubs, back to back, again recruiting for EN. We are on the ground, we work, we hustle.
Please, review that list and find us a pair of more productive, harder-working coaches. Please.
The Twenty Percent: Plans + Products Only, Please
To be completely honest if you’ve read this post, listened to the podcast, and you still don’t get the value of the community and everything that lives behind the EN logo, well sorry, this was our best shot. If you aren’t an online whiz or extrovert, but you do want the best damn triathlon training materials available anywhere, then just shop EN and ignore the rest.
We’ve learned that, in a world of $1100 race wheels, there are only so many dog tricks we are willing to do to earn your $1/day, particularly when the 80% recognize and commend us for the value we have created for them. We will quietly and confidently continue to over deliver and create incredible value for our Team…fully expecting that the other folks will, over time, eventually “get it.”
Are You:
80% / 20%?
In/Out?
Listen to the accompanying podcast by Rich and Patrick, No Black Box.
Thanks for reading…we’ll see you online!
Rich + Patrick
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