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...
Culture
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...
The Ultimate Booklist for Entrepreneurs: 48 Books to Supercharge Your Business
For anyone who knows me in real life or follows me on the interwebz, it’s no secret I have a problem. You see… I’m a junkie. Every day I wake up and live a life of servitude to my addiction. It’s all consuming. It’s obsessive. And at times, it’s truly a burden for...
A Brief (Motivating?) Rant About Why You Should Do Less, But Better
Allow me a brief moment to rant. I’m not promising that it will be productive, but it will be passionate. There is a subset of business coaches and thought leaders peddling dangerous ideas like you can have it all if you’re willing to hustle, and if you’re not...
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...
16 Ways To Improve Your Customer Service, Part 2: Grow Your Revenue and Increase Retention By “Giving A Sh*t”
And without further ado, let’s take a deep dive into the second half of our two part series and learn more ways to up-level your customer service. In part two, we’ll cover: The perils of standardizing “wow” moments How to stand out by actually being a real live human...
16 Ways To Improve Your Customer Service, Part 1: Grow Your Revenue and Increase Retention By “Giving A Sh*t”
Call me old-fashioned, but I find great customer service inspiring. Based on your industry, customer service can take many forms. It can be an expertly prepared and served meal. It can be a thoughtfully curated travel experience. It can simply be a warm and personal...
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...
Don’t Go It Alone: How to Fight Entrepreneurial Loneliness and Find Community
When I was in middle school, I started obsessively studying musical theater. I would go to the library and check out various cast albums, then make cassette tape recordings. Since I planned to go into the field, I was determined to study the genre and become an...
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...
How to Build Instant Rapport and Trust by Being a Better Listener
Most of us are crappy listeners. We think we’re paying attention, but we’re not. All too often we’re just waiting for our chance to talk. Or we’re judging what the other person is saying so that we can quickly agree or disagree. Or we are lost in our own mental...
Why Motivating Your Team Isn’t Working: 3 Ways to Use Incentives and Accountability without Crushing Souls
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery Incentives are a tricky thing. To some extent, all...
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...
The Workplace As A Sharpening Saw of Humanity: The Complete Guide To Creating a Culture of Learning
Read Time: 12-15 Minutes If you’re looking to have a successful (and sustainable!) business, education matters. It matters a lot. Continuous and never-ending improvement is not only the key to making continued improvements in the business, it’s necessary to not...
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...
3 LESSONS LEARNED FROM RUNNING THE WORLD’S ONLY UNICORN FITNESS CULT IN 2016: THE MICHAEL EDITION
Welcome to Part 2 of our lessons learned from 2016. Miss Mark’s Edition? Check it out here. Damn. What a year it’s been. Happy reading! Michael’s Lesson # 1: Some parts of your business are never done. Get used to it. I used to believe the myth that if you work...
3 LESSONS LEARNED FROM RUNNING THE WORLD’S ONLY UNICORN FITNESS CULT IN 2016: THE MARK EDITION
The end of 2016 marks the end of MFF’s fifth year in business. (What the hell?! Where’d the time go?! Where’d these gray hairs come from?!) In an industry where most businesses don’t survive past year three, we are so proud and humbled and grateful that we’ve made it...
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...