Culture

Values AND Profit

First off, if you haven’t booked your tickets to Perform Better’s 3-Day-Summits… what are you waiting for?? BFU Coach Pete Dupuis is speaking in Orlando, and yours truly will be in Long Beach and Chicago. It’s one of the hands-down best events in the industry. I’ll be...

5 Key Traits of Modern Leaders (with links to TED Talks)

I’ve been thinking and reading about leadership a ton over the last few months while creating the Leadership Society. To be fair, leadership is a topic I’ve been fascinated by for most of my life.     It’s become clear to me that the recipe for great leadership...

240 Words on Building a Business

Building a business is not for everyone. It takes guts, vision, and persistence.    If you want to build a business...   You’ve got to have a vision for the value you can bring to the world and be willing to fight like hell to make it happen.    You...

The New Must-Have Skillset for Business Leaders

(Disclaimer: Hey Fitness People! To avoid any confusion, when I use the word coach in this context I’m talking about the umbrella term for any professional who guides and instructs and not specifically a personal trainer or fitness coach. Cool? Disclaimer over.)...

3 Tips for Taking Feedback Like a Pro

We often focus on improving our ability as managers and leaders to give feedback, but we should also spend time becoming better at receiving feedback. Receiving feedback can be difficult for two main reasons: it is unexpected or it is emotionally triggering. In this...

10 Quick Tips for Building Community

In the past year, I’ve worked with over one hundred business leaders. And in all of those interactions, there was one topic that arose the most frequently. Every business owner wants to know how to build community. It’s not enough these days to just have a solid...

5 Phrases That Will Make You A Better Leader

As a leader, you have an outsized impact on those around you. That impact can be a positive one in which you help others be more productive, empowered and inspired. Or your impact can be a negative one leaving those you lead feeling confused, frustrated or worse of...

Our Free System for Managing Customer Experience

At Mark Fisher Fitness (MFF) feedback is our greatest currency. When we foster an open dialogue between our team and our Ninjas (aka clients) our culture and community thrive as a result. With the currency of feedback, you can buy what we all seek in our relationships...

All Models Are Wrong, Some Are Useful

All models are wrong but some are useful. I’ve used this phrase a million times when talking about business models because it sounds super smart. But I wasn’t sure where it came from. So so I did a little digging. Turns out, this axiom was made popular by British...

How to Completely Change Your Relationship to Feedback

I am an education junkie. Show me a workshop, book or conference that could help me expand my thinking or help me make a better impact on the world and I am all in. Recently I went to the best conference I’ve attended to date -- the 2018 WorkHuman Conference, created...

3 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your First Team Member

One of the most important decisions you will make when you are starting or growing your business is who to hire as your first team member. While hiring the right people for your team is always important, making your first hire as a new business is uniquely critical....

How to Define Your Company’s Values and Make Them Stick

Let’s start at the very beginning. (I hear it’s a very good place to start. #musicaljokes) What the heck are values? Values are our standards of behavior, our judgment of what is important in life. If I were to ask you about the things you value most in your personal...

How to Set Boundaries with Clients

Video Cliffs Notes The Core IssueIn a high-touch, customer-centric business it is essential to cultivate intimate relationships with your customers.When you have a strong personal connection with your clients you:Have a deeper understanding of their needs and...

The 5 Minute Mission Statement

Your company’s mission statement answers the simple question, why do you exist? Having a good answer to that question isn’t trivial. Having a good answer to that question will influence every decision you make about your business. It defines your purpose. Without a...

How to Create Boundaries That Help You Achieve Your Goals

Here is a description of what can be a normal week for me. Does this sound familiar to you? On Sunday I sit down to look at my week ahead. It looks busy, but pretty doable. I have some regularly scheduled meetings, some plans I made with friends, and some dedicated...

MF’S 15 BUSINESS PRINCIPLES

In this post, I’m going to give you a run-down of some of my guiding principles in how I approach decision making. When possible, I do my best to attribute, but I’m very confident I have adopted concepts that I’ve read and later forgot. We can assume none of my ideas...

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM FOR PERSONAL TRAINERS

Being a personal trainer is a tough job. I’ve never done it, but I’ve been in the business long enough to see how challenging it is. You have to be energetic but chill. You have to be demanding yet compassionate. You have to be informed but remain curious. Clients...

HOW TO GIVE FEEDBACK EVEN IF YOU HATE CONFLICT

When I zoom out to my most core beliefs about the value of business in society, I think of two tenets about business done well: Business should make you a better human. Better humans are more successful at business. It may not seem that way, because oftentimes raging...

EXCELLENCE IS A HABIT

3 Exercises to Fine Tune Your Team’s Customer Service Skills   “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do....

DEAR FITNESS INDUSTRY

[Originally Posted October 2016, Updated June 2018]   Dear Fitness Industry, Am I invisible? Every day I see your ads online, on TV, and in the street, but none of them seem to be for me. I can see you, can you see me? I know you are a big industry with lots of...

FUN MATTERS

How much fun is your job? Kind of fun? A lot of fun? No fun? Fun matters. A lot. Regardless of your industry, if you create a space where your team and your clients/ customers have a lot of fun, you’re going to have a huge advantage. Your team will work better, and...