(Diligent readers will note I shared a version of this email over the summer. But since I know staffing is still an issue, I wanted to share it again.) Finding qualified team members is one of the biggest challenges of owning a training gym. And the stakes are high to...
Hiring & Team Development
Avoid Burnout: How to Take Care of Others While Caring for Yourself
The fastest way to burnout as a helping professional is to take on the thoughts and feelings of your clients as your own. It doesn’t have to be that way. It is truly possible to be available to help others while still leaving some gas in the tank for ourselves at the end of each day.
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.)...
5 Quick(ish) Thoughts On Luck, Survival, and Success
Behold! Some useful and provocative business musings to make your life and business better. ************************ Beware Of Advice From Successful, Lucky Idiots A strong operator can handle a crappy market. An amazing market can prop up a sloppy operator. The right...
Consistently Excellent: 5 Keys to Train Your Team on Systems Mastery
Any leader knows the only way to succeed in business is through creating systems. Good systems provide clearly documented procedures for how business is conducted. This leads to consistency for the experience of clients and customers, and a team of people who have a...
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...
Done-For-You Presentation: 10 Tips to Improve Your Team’s Email Etiquette
No one ever teaches us how to use email. One day we're handed an email address and it's assumed we'll just figure it out. [Spoiler alert: We're not very good at just figuring it out.] So, it makes perfect sense that for many of us emails are a source of frequent...
From New Hire To Superstar: The Principles of Effective Onboarding
Teamwork! Makes the dream work! Unless you screw up onboarding. In which case… Teamwork! Makes your business unravel, enrages your clients, and sends you to bankruptcy court! Ok, that may be a bit extreme. But it’s fair to say that if you don’t have a system to...
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...
Creating Effective In-Services: A Done-For-You System To Train Your Team
As covered previously on this blog, meetings are often a boring waste of time that take us away from our actual job.But it doesn’t have to be that way. Meetings can be a place for brainstorming to find solutions. They can be a place for vigorous debate to address a...
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 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...
5 STEPS TO DELEGATE WITH CONFIDENCE
After you watch, please join the conversation in the comments below. How do you like to be asked for help? If someone was going to delegate a task to you, how should they do it? Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
YOUR MEETINGS PROBABLY SUCK. I CAN HELP.
Let’s start with the unfiltered truth. No one at your business likes going to meetings and that’s (probably) because your meetings suck. Your meetings rarely start or end on time, they’re boring, they are mostly filled with people not giving a shit or people talking...
THE ONE TOOL YOUR TEAM DOESN’T KNOW THEY NEED
Tell me if this describes a team that you are part of or manage at work: We just aren’t all on the same page. We seem to be working toward different goals. No one seems to know what’s expected of them. Any of that sound familiar? If so, you are not alone my friend....
PROGRAMMING SYSTEMATIZATION: ORCHESTRATING YOUR STAFF TO SING THE SAME SONG
By: Todd Bumgardner Folks that own fitness businesses understand the positive power of systems. We have billing systems, marketing systems, and coaching systems—but what about programming systems? Many gym owners, and their employees, are writing programs from scratch...
THE ULTIMATE HIRING GUIDE
The Ultimate Hiring Guide: How to Avoid A Bad Hire and Build A Rock Star Team The cost of a bad hire is staggering. Great companies are made of great employees, so when you hire the wrong person for the wrong job your company can take a serious hit. In this...