Level Up Your LEADERSHIP Skills

people, gym, business, owners, leadership, coach, big, plan, system, trust, idea, talk, accountability, problems, run, execute, tyler, leader

Tyler 00:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the gym owners podcast. I'm your host, Tyler stone over the way is John Fairbanks, Johnson. Hello, Tyler, guys, it's been a big week here, we've got a lot of new stuff we've been rolling out for clients, the last couple of weeks, we've been busy as hell. But there's meeting with a lot of gym owners, there's a thing that we've done, I've kind of identified as a, either a prerequisite or something that we need to be developing as in your tool belt as Gym owner. And that is leadership. And it is one of those situations where as a gym owner, you're it's, there's a lot of businesses where you can own it and don't necessarily have to be a big huge Leadership isn't a massive part of the requirements, you can kind of delegate a lot of that stuff out, you can do a it just doesn't have to be as big of a community movement. What's the word were like movement really is a thing. We've talked about this quite a bit in the past. You're creating a movement in your community, in your town, in your area, you're managing people, and you need to inspire, you need to hold people accountable. Like that's just that's actually part of the work of coaching and delivering this business is leading accountability, all of this stuff. So we realized as we looked through that, there's a big gap in leadership when it comes to gym ownership, and I think some do it really, really well. And there are some that need to take a really hard look at your leadership skills, where you communicate how you operate your business, as a leader, and are you actually trying to be a leader? Or are you simply trying to be a kind of a doer? And that is something we want to dive deep into today. When it comes to leadership, there's a lot of things that we've run into over these past few years since COVID. We've seen the COVID stuff, a lot of gym owners, I know that things were working well, because frankly, from 2013 to 2018 19. In the functional fitness space, you got a lot of big free pushes and a lot of big free interests because you shared one of the names that was on your billboard or on your side was one that people were just searching for. It's a hot COVID hit. And next thing we know is what grants the government shutting people down. That's difficult. But we realized that I think there were a lot of people who were not equipped to do much beyond what was easy, coming in over those years and businesses were not very resilient and the leaders of those places were kind of content to take what they were given. And not to not to make anybody feel bad because don't get me wrong. We lost a lot of things over with the COVID lockdowns, I think the COVID policy and all that stuff cost a lot of people a lot us included, we had businesses that we had to close we've had to move country there's, you know, this is we're not I'm not over here, just going What are you a bunch of quitters? Right? I feel completely, you know, I was down to six suitcases as a family and nowhere to live moving back to the United States. So trust me, I know that it was hard. But I saw and I called it, you know, Julian and I called it at the very beginning of the COVID lockdowns, we said, I have a feeling there's a lot of people that are gonna look for this as an excuse to say, oh, shit, it didn't work out.



John Fairbanks 03:08

Well, there was blood in the water. Yeah. And I think there was blood in the water. The one thing that I've said, since COVID, is that, love it or hate it, how your country responded to COVID. And how we responded to Donald Trump, as our president. Both incidents just highlighted, or just lifted the sheet and shined a light on all the problems that were already there. Yeah, so COVID just strained, whatever your system was, whatever the system was that you had in your business, your own personal ethos, if there were problems, it just strained it to a breaking point, to the point to where it did break it. Talking about the brand issues. Tyler, one of the things that you and I talked a lot about, especially when we were working with strong fit, was way too much reliance by gym owners for the brand. So whether they wanted to be affiliated with CrossFit or F 45. Or if they were going to be a strong fit. There was just too much desire to not have it be your own. Exactly. And for some reason you want to put your hooks into a well, no, I'll be successful if I can be a CrossFit gym if I could be a strong fit gym. And as soon as that didn't pay off, as soon as COVID strained that system where you really weren't interested in being you, and you were just going to rely off the brand.



Tyler 04:45

And brands and brands just can't, especially the CrossFit brand that you had all that disruption with the Glassman stuff and all of a sudden, now when there's a huge, huge what's the word? Just a bunch of people that was the opposite of it and for are a big outpouring of fucking cancelling of affiliate affiliations x a big excess. Well done, John, thank you from the first book of Genesis. So, but that was something that we noticed that as we started, like, there was just a bit of a. And by the way, I know it's hard. But if your business takes, let's just say, six weeks, eight weeks where you can't operate in your building, how resilient are you? How much cash do you have put aside, a lot of it was simply about being you operating paycheck to paycheck, essentially, as a business. And that's what we realized, like, Oh, you've been in, we've been in here with the gravy train of publicity, and free traffic, and all this stuff, because of your association with another brand. And yet, it didn't make anything that can sustain, frankly, you know, if you got a little water in your basement, you know, you're gonna be screwed if you shut down for a few weeks. So that's one of the sides of this, as part of leadership is you need to be the person, it's not about being a wild General Patton type, you know, boot in the ass type guy. As far as leadership goes, John, you play sports on team sports at a pretty high level. And one of the things it has less to do about being the person that has all the right answers, and more to do about being the person who says, here's my plan. This is the best plan that I can put forward. And I am willing to do what it takes to implement this, all of you on my staff, here's what we want to do, let's communicate, we'll have input on this. But in the end, what I do say whatever we come to agreement on, is going to go forward, which means I now need to start holding my staff accountable to the things that they need to be doing. What if they don't know what they need to be doing? The issue we see with a lot of gyms was like their staff has tasked the owners are expecting of them, and they're not doing fucking any of them. But it's the owner's fault, because you failed to communicate that to them. If you don't talk about the human nature thing, everything will scale back to the most comfortable thing. In every job that's going to happen. It's just what we'll do. And so if you don't communicate to them, Hey, you need to do this every Monday and this every Wednesday. And then I need these key performance indicators to start moving in the right direction. And if they're not, I need to not just chew on them when it doesn't work. But it also means now I need to go okay, what can we do? What do you say to hold them accountable? But what do you need to do in order to make this work, maybe they're missing some tools, maybe they're missing the concept altogether. Or maybe they just need you to work with them on it. But that way, you can start to actually lead instead of hope, because this is what a lot of gym owners do. And I hate the fucking whatever. If you think it's you, it might be you. But there's Listen, guys, we see a lot of stuff. There's a lot of them out there, a lot of gym owners who posted shit on social media for a year, two years, two and a half years on their personal stuff about the business at all. I've seen businesses and gyms that are barely posting on social media. But once every three to six months, you know, we've seen gyms that post consistently, and then take the summer off from social media. Social media is not the be all and end all. But it is a free thing that you can be doing. So if you're worried about getting leads, and you're not doing anything, then all you're doing is hoping and you're not leading, okay? You don't hope to win a war. You need to lead your people, you need to equip them and you need to go. That is how this is done. You're not going to hope your way out of a COVID lockdown, you need to have a lead and prepared and how to plan and build a very resilient system that is capable of taking a big huge fucking punch in the face.



John Fairbanks 08:27

And only happens through action. Like action steps. Going back to your example of playing college sports. Like you only have one you can't, you will not be successful if you don't plan. Right, that's obvious. You have to have a plan. If you don't have a fucking plan, then you stand no chance. But the plan cannot be where this stops. And the thing that's crazy. You can do a whole bunch of planning like in college sports. You have the whole offseason. You can try and plan. But in all reality, whatever your offseason is, we talk a lot oftentimes with gym owners where summertime, things will slow down. You might as well call that the offseason. Yeah. So if you're going to make some tweaks, make some changes, do some things to prepare. For in season, when you hit fall and winter, and you know, you're going to be really hitting it hard and your jam is going to explode. You want to be prepping once you're in the shit. You can only plan for so long. If we're going to play Tennessee, and then Alabama, and then Georgia. And then we're going to keep playing Team. team after team after team week after week. You don't get to plan for more than two days, maybe. And then you have to be going. You can't complain, oh I don't have good. I don't have good players. Or if you're a gym owner, oh my coaches are dog shit or whatever. It's like you got what you got. So now you're going to go to war, you're going to go and play the game, you're going to go and participate, you better have a fucking action plan that you are taking action on. Because oftentimes, it's the one. Nobody has a fucking plan. That's become evident. You've just been coasting by. If you do have a plan, you've been fucking stuck in a Oh, planning, figure things out, just want to get a feel for how things are going, like get fucking beyond that and start taking some actual action to see if you're planning is worth a shit. Yeah, a big thing that's here on the tech side that I do is you hear all the time in the sprints, where you get all these people together, and they say, this is the idea we want to execute, and we want to fail fast, fail fast, you need to fail fast. So that you know, what do you need to pivot? Well,



Tyler 10:56

That is the thing that we do a lot, and that you have to have a plan. And that plan has to be pushing forward very, very, very quickly, very effectively and thoughtfully, you can't just ram your head into the wall at full speed. But there's a difference between having an idea and having a plan. Just like there's a bit there's a big difference between having an opinion and being intelligent. Right? It's all the same thing. Right? And so having an idea is great. What are you going to do? Can you get people to implement it? Can you really get people to wrap up? Because you're gonna do it all yourself? Where's the time out? What are the actions because we talked with the client yesterday, and it went really well. But one of the things we were talking about, we gave out a very bulleted list of actions for them to find a role with, like, step by step for tests a day for seven days, like, let's get this project moving, right. And that was one of the things that I use, like, you know, this is great, because every step of this, I already have the systems to do. The only thing I need now should just run through this. It's like exactly, and now this thing that we've delivered to you replicate this for every other thing that you're doing, because now instead of looking at this project, which is like, Okay, say I want to get, you know, I want to up my Google game, right? Well, having your mom leave you a Google review and thinking about it and telling two or three people will get you two or three more Google reviews. But how does that become implemented into your gym system? How do you fully launch that to cover all the ground you've been missing? Because you've been slacking for years. And then how do you also make sure that every person who comes in the door gets it? Those are things that we operate within Gear Academy, as we make sure that they have the plan, we hold them to the fire. So everything that you're doing is not an idea that you're trying. It's a plan that's being executed, and then being built as a part of your business. That's the piece you got to be, every step you're taking needs to be a thing that you're leaving down behind you permanently. And if it sucks, you take one step back, and you dig it up and throw it in the garbage. But you always have to move forward as though this is the way I want to do things. And always be willing, by the way, to abandon something if it sucks, but it's about trusting your own judgment and being willing to fail. And it says I think very often I hope it's we're in the end like failing at multiple businesses opening and failing and trying and succeeding at multiple of your own businesses is one of the best ways to learn to trust your judgment is very, very rare. There's one thing that I run into all time with people, with business partners and everything that we do. I learned very quickly now that may or may not quickly, I've learned very quickly. What's the word definitively now that my judgment is pretty on point? My first instinct is pretty good. And every time I bite on it, and fucking wrong, and it blows, it is wrong. And it blew up in my face and said, you know, if I would have just right away, we would have been just fine. So learn, stop second guessing yourself. The most important thing I think his leadership is you need to Yes, you need to know that you may fail at this. But the moment you make a decision, you trust your instincts, and you move forward and be thoughtful. Don't drag anybody into deep water and drown them. But in the end, as you go through this process, things get wild. Use your judgment. Again, that can be this doesn't work. Let's find a different angle. What do we need to do to change really objectively look through these things after the fact during the process, but a process of constant correction, constant course correction, and optimization, always be looking to optimize, always be looking to be more efficient, always be looking to scale? Anytime I talk to somebody that's running through those filters in their brain they're making sure they're on the right path. So okay, yeah. So we'll start with this. And if it gets like this, we'll back this one back this way, that this way, and then I can ramp it up here. Like now you're thinking, I'll stop thinking and start going. And that's all you need to do if you want to launch a new program? That's what we do. Right? What are the five steps? What do we call it? How do we do this? We're going to do all this and we're gonna Washington for how do we build it forever? How do I make sure new people know that the thing that exists? How do I make sure that people get reminded of it constantly? How do I market it? You don't have to do all of it at once. But now you have like 15 things that can be done and how you start doing them and you start bringing staff on board. And this is the name of the game is leadership. Leadership is having a plan leadership is marching forward leadership is like it's being able to inspire people to stick with it to just trust your judgment and know by the way that you're not going to be bullheaded and crash the whole thing into the rocks because it was your fucking idea. First, you know, that's, that's, that's an important side, admitting that you're wrong is just as important as being willing to say, it's my plan. I thought it out, I appreciate your feedback, here's how we're gonna go forward. The same, there are two sides of the same coin. It's about leaning towards what is right.



John Fairbanks 15:22

That confidence only comes from time in the saddle. Yeah, to be able to trust your judgment. It took you time, because you needed to have it happen enough times to be you know what? I may feel intolerable, because I feel like I know the answer before we have to go down and crash this fucking thing into the wall. But I've now watched enough people crash things into the wall, when I could have said something that I'm now very confident in my ability to see this. And I would say,



Tyler 15:52

Yeah, can I swap a battery here? You're good.



John Fairbanks 15:55

So the one thing for sure that what I'm saying is when we're talking about this topic, and we're touching on this idea of being a leader, that leadership piece is so important for gym owners, for you to be able to step back, whether you're a personal trainer, and your own business, or whether you're a gym owner, and you have people that rely on you. They rely on you to be able to be the captain of the ship, you have to have the heading. You can't be guessing and coming to people and being unsure or saying hey, I think I want to work on a thing. We talked about this all the time, we're working with people. And when we work, and I know for us personally, we have spouses, your spouse needs to have confidence in what you're doing. That confidence comes from your confidence. Your coaches, confidence comes from your confidence, your clients confidence comes from your confidence. And if you aren't saying, Hey, I'm confident in the direction that we're going, and you do it enough, like you said, Tyler constantly course correcting. If you're not making those micro adjustments in real time, then what you're gonna have, keep the fucking sailor pirate thing going on. If you're sailing a boat, and your crew isn't confident where you're going, you're gonna have a goddamn coup on your hands. And how many times have we seen either that happen? Or we start to feel it under the surface is happening to a gym owner, where he's starting to lose control of his own ship.



Tyler 17:45

Yeah. And so big leadership traps you can fall in as being too bullheaded and too stubborn about your own plan and your own ideas. So this is the thing these are things that I learned the hard way from beginning horse that was like my primary things was my idea of the highway, and then I overcorrected back and started to doubt my decision making and then I started in doing so you end up not trusting your own instincts, which is a huge mistake. So those are two big ones, you need to find balance between those two, between trusting yourself trusting your judgment, and then just actually fucking being interested in the data, and information and learning and adapting. That's super important. Getting other people on board is the name of the game because leadership is delegation. Frankly, as your system grows, it needs to be delegated. It needs to be identifying opportunities as well. You need to identify opportunities, triage prioritizing, geography and prioritize and execute. That's almost the primary role of a leader. Everybody has ideas that we can do going forward with somebody . This is the one we're doing now. I'm sorry, this is you know, we need to weed out the riff raff and now we need to go forward with this because this is what I think the next right thing to do is that's super, super, super important in regards to leadership. In a community with your gym, it's another thing you need to we need to engage you need to inspire you to kneel, you know, with coach coaching is leadership. So that needs to be all the systems we're talking about are fractal from the bottom all the way up that your coaches need to be good leaders, you need to be a good leader for your coaches in doing so. That's how you build what your actual culture of your GM is, of what your team is, what your business is, they should be nearly the same. It should be welcoming. It should still be trusting in the person who's making the decisions, trusting in someone else's expertise. And that's the name of the game guys. So leadership is a piece though that I see lacking just so much in the fitness space because I think we started out as a lot of one man operations. And as a one man operation you go yeah, we'll just kind of do and we adapt and figure out but then there's not the eye for growth and if your business isn't growing, your business is dying. And I hate this is the one thing that I've known since the very beginning with every business I've been a part of. If your business is not growing, it is dying for not evolving, you're dying, it's the way it always works. Cities are the same way, by the way the town is not growing, it is dying. Any system involving complex systems involving human beings is either growing one way, or it is dying. It's either getting into entropy or it is fighting it. That's it. There is no stasis point. That's great. But that doesn't work. It's the same thing with, you know, everything you're talking about investing in the stock markets, all this shit is not about consistent profits from quarter to quarter. It's not profits that have to grow from this quarter to the next quarter. And by the way, what if our increase in profits that we projected from this quarter to the next quarter, we thought, we're gonna see 2% growth, but instead, it's one and a half percent growth, let's do growth, but it's not as much as we predicted, and boom, we take a confidence hit. Right, the name of the game is growth. And if you're, again, if you're not evolving, you're dying. This is a fact.



John Fairbanks 20:53

Well, the one thing that I get really frustrated with is, a lot of folks that become gym owners were coaches before. And the odds are, you had that itch that drive to be a really great coach, you didn't want to listen to some other fucking person tell you what to do. So you were willing to strike out on your own and take that bull by the horns and go and do it. So you applied a lot of good skills to probably become a great coach. Shit, Hunter talked about it when we talked to him of how he took this mentality that he had had for years to become a great coach. And now he started to unleash it on what it means to be a great gym owner. And a great business owner is, if you've worked hard to become a great coach, you have all the skills, you know what to do to become a great gym owner, to become a great business owner. The issue is that I think that there's a lack of understanding of what you do. There's lots of things out there like, oh, I can go and get my level one certification, or I can get a nutrition certification, or a transformation certification, or I want to be at a personal training certification. Like that's all really easy to see. But when it comes to the business side, that's where things I think it muddier is not as clear, or it feels really fucking gross with some of the sharks that we see in that place. That's why a lot of the things that we're talking about like raising your business IQ doesn't necessarily come from the fitness world but from a lot of different areas. But man, it's a huge benefit that our folks have been able to raise their business IQ with someone that has kind of gotten to the top of the mountain and continues to excel and owns a gym business and owns a gym that continues to have success. I mean, I think that's a huge benefit that we bring to our folks inside of the gear Academy is to be able to raise that CEO IQ level on the Jim front.



Tyler 23:05

Yeah, well, a lot of that comes from this. And some of these are things we did, these leadership quota things we baked into what we do with the gear Academy as well, but the like on the CEO coaching side of things, you know, we have great goodwill and come in and partner with us for that stuff. And Willams is great at delegating systems, that's his thing is identifying where the skills you, as a gym owner, as a business owner, need to level up. You know, to your point as Perkins he fits in right on the outside the edges of everything we want to mess with, right? But we start with people very often with time management, identifying where you're bleeding your time, what basics you need to be delegating. Where are you leaking money in the beginning? was most of this, how do I were talking to someone the other day too, is I forget that the same issues that our clients have in there same needs and wants that our clients have our fitness clients have almost the same as our gym owners clients have. And the word always works. And I always bring this up to people all the time that it's so great, it's a buzzword that sells that's not being like, click Beatty, right? It's accountability. And I forget that I was taught I tell Jericho gym owners who were building their products such as accountability as a service, you need to find a way to work in one way or another where you have a product. And then you just say we're also doing accountability. That's part but that word hits with people and you know why that word connects with clients, fitness clients, more than weight loss, by the way, because weight loss is the goal. When you talk about what services you're offering, and they say nutrition coaching, some fitness stuff, whatever. And if accountability is in there, because they know they know it was now they know it's always been that right. They know it's what it is. It's never been the plan. It's never been , I don't do it. And so every time we talked to somebody we talked to I talked to a fitness guy and all the time. Yeah, I really want accountability. I want accountability. It's not that they want to pay you extra. Ah, by the way, they're paying you to do the thing that they need to do, but they want to pay you extra to make sure that they do it. That's why investing in yourself doesn't seem silly, right? But it's human psychology that accountability is something they know they need because deep down in their heart, they know that they're the reason I haven't had success, that all plans probably work if done, right, kind of every, every single thing will work until it doesn't. And if it doesn't, or you weren't, you weren't held accountable means they know that it was their fault in the past, and they want to make sure that you save them from themselves. And with our gym owners' clients, we hear the same thing when people say, Yeah, I want to get in on the Gear Academy. I want to get in, I want to start working with you guys directly. It's because yeah, I need the accountability I need I need someone to just say, you know, this is what I use with networking in general, I've always done this with my networking is, is I find somebody said give me the what is like the three things I should do for this, this or this. And then what I do is I say that I will say I'll check back in with you and let you know how it goes. And this is exactly what our gym or is it working with us says it Yeah, you know what, I really need the accountability. Somebody told me, You're right. If I want this project to work, these are the four tasks that need to start this week. And then next week, I'll check in with you and we'll meet. We'll see how it went and see what we can tune up. That accountability is kind of the name of the game. Accountability. By the way, accountability, what do you think colleges are? Guess why you go to class fucking information that you can't get? Do you think there's any information in the world that you can't get right now. By the way people explain there is no shortage of it. So there's the arbitrary certification nature of college, which there's jobs that need it. I get it, I could be a surgeon and not go to college. But truthfully, your teacher is there to hold you accountable. Make sure you did the work, make sure you actually learn, right? In business it's not some big school where you know, go off and do all your things you can do. The sharp ones just like what Hunter did, the other day Hunter pays us to do the things that he, you know, needs help guidance on. But the other stuff he wanted to take on his own. It's perfect. I'm gonna learn a shitload about copywriting. And he held himself accountable. He did it, he tested it, he failed, he passed. He tested it. He tested, he basically designed his own test, right, he learned the information, crafted his own test, did the work, went back and graded it said at about a seat. Let's turn it up, keep trying again, and design another test. And that's not what he's doing. That's what learning is, right? It's mastery. And you can do that with everything. But sometimes you need help. And fortunately, John and I don't charge $20,000 every semester for it. But accountability is the nature of what education is truthfully unless you're a real self starter. Or the truth is you're just busy. And these can get easily distracted in the day to day minutia of your business. It's hard, you need somebody to say Sit the fuck out. Right now, what are the four? It is always what are the four things that are holding you back right now? What identifies them, okay, what one do we need to fix right now is it skill, is it maybe just a part of your business, the system needs to be fixed, perfect. But next week, that system is leaning towards being better, and maybe it won't get fixed in a week. But every week it improves and in a few weeks, that's fixed, whatever we move on to something else. At that rate in two years, your business will progress further as a system as quality, your expertise or skill level your business acumen will increase 5x in two years. Or you can sit on us and keep doing what you're doing. Whatever but, but that is it. But but that is what leadership is leadership is being the guy who's gonna man a guy or girl who says, I have to figure out how to make this better, because the buck stops here, nobody's fucking coming to save you. That's not an important thing about you is your business, nobody's coming to save, you want to get another PPE loan and hope to God the door that they never come back for it cool. Or you better start figuring out how to earn and how to save. And it makes a system that works and still delivers results. And so your soul in the process, it's not impossible. But it is required if you're going to be around for 15 years. I have a gym that we worked with today that we want to say this, by the way, I have a gym that I work with today to talk to you. They have had 15 year members, quite a few have more than 20. Whatever that formula is just working, you know, at the very least they've been in the game. You know, and that's a big deal. In your membership, that's big. That's big.



John Fairbanks 29:24

Because of forward thinking, you only stay in business, because you're keeping your eyes ahead. The system that you have is efficient. And don't get wrapped up in the fitness world for this. What businesses have been in business for 20 years, 30 years, whatever they're doing, whatever those principles are, our sound no matter what business they're in, and that's the part where you have to be looking. As an owner, you have to have Do you have to be forward thinking? Do you have enough time to do that? Do you just have 20 ideas rattling in your head? To the point where you never actually get time to sit down and execute a single one of them? Great. Your business is fucked. Are you busy running it?



Tyler 30:17

Yeah. Well, you're too busy having ideas because ideas, ideas are like opinions. They really are. Nobody gives a shit about it. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. I don't care about your idea until it exists. I'm sorry, what is your plan to implement your idea? You know, your opinion is marvelous. What do you want to do? Right? What are we going to do if you're gonna have an opinion on an issue, or why we're out, then how do we fix this? How do you remedy this? How do you improve the situation? If you think this thing sucks? What should be better? Because your plan of making it better is the only thing that I care about? Right? And your idea? Yeah, I want to try this thing. And this thing, everybody has ideas, every by the way, we've, we've done this before, with gym owners, where they're like, you know, especially when we get into some deeper processes with them, where we're doing a lot of stuff for them. And we're almost helping them implement many concurrent ideas at the same time, you know, what I mean? There's a lot of people who go really deep with our services, we're like, Okay, we have these six things, we're gonna roll on, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And the worst thing that ever happens, in those situations, the thing we always have to dial back for them was like, no, no, no, you're not here to have more ideas. Sorry, right. Now, it's time to go. So we're probably going to because what happens is, sometimes we go to this one, we identify an issue here, and the next thing you know, they want to pivot. It's like, well, hang on here, because then you end up with that shiny object syndrome. And by doing everything, you actually are doing nothing. And so sometimes somebody needs to say, No, we're going to fix this thing. We don't get to just solve a different problem now, because this one is hard, or because I don't actually want to think about what's going on with my staffing issues, my personnel problems, I don't want to actually train my employees, I want to hold them accountable. I don't want to, I don't want to have to advance the system, because it seems are, you know, it's tough the way that that's the way it works with a lot of business. But the buck stops with you. This is a thing that I've you know, not to it's, you know, I'm sure it works for men and women and moms and dads too. But as a father, it's the only difference. It's just the only dynamic I know. My job is to be the person who says Okay, that's it at some point, like, you know, yes, we all come together on this thing, but like, I'll be accountable, fucking ship sex. You know what I mean? If we're homeless on the street, guess who it is whose fault it is, I promise, I know whose fault it is, it would be mine. The day we have no money, we're living on the street, it's on me. And then the day we get out of that situation, it will only happen because I was willing to buckle up and do it. At the very least, maybe that's not the only reason we would get out of it. But that is the way I take on that responsibility. You need to lead, you need to lead your business like you lead your family, like you lead a sports team, it's all the same. And it needs to be built on trust. Everybody believes that you're trying to make the right decision that we're all working on the same team, get your ego out of the way, but still trust your instincts. It's a lot. It's a balancing act. But leadership in your business, its leadership qualities are great when a business has big teams, it's required. The leader, the CEO, like people bitch about granted CEOs in general, there's a lot of CEO positions that are fake jobs, they're just like, what I've seen a lot where it's almost like being a king. You know, it's just like an arbitrary made up position where like, Oh, now you don't do anything, you're a figurehead. You're the queen of England. And you get paid, you know, that is with a lot of systems that does is where it becomes but not in yours, paid to break it to you, not in yours. So the buck stops with you, you have to make the decisions, you need to lead the way that you would lead any of those things. And those systems are a thing with big systems, a big team. So if you're the CEO of a fucking bank, like a large regional bank, now you're in charge, like, Okay, we're gonna open new branches here. If you're gonna open new branches there, you are going to be responsible for a colossal failure. But you have people that you hope are giving you the right information, right? You're getting all the right information. There's people that you have built, now you have built trust with them, they understand what you're trying to do. And that's the nature of that game. It's like, I trust you, you trust me, what do you think let's objectively decide, I know you want one here, but like, let's, we can all fuck this up together.



John Fairbanks 34:18

And I think it's important what you just called out where it's when you get to that level, you're talking to top suite executives, they're not ever making a decision on their own. Their name may be on the dotted line. But I guarantee you, they either have a board that they're not just have to be accountable for but that they work with. They have an inner circle of people that are maybe in their small executive team. And they sure as fuck have other CEOs in other industries or adjacent industries to their own, that get on the phone, or they can talk to and say these are the things I'm thinking about and that For us is the epitome of why we started. The gym owners revolution, the online resource that we have, that's free, because it is lonely. Being a leader can be lonely at times when you need to be able to spit a ball, when you need to be able to get opinions when it's on the words.



Tyler 35:23

And you're not sure and smart. And when you're not, by the way, you have a team of employees whose livelihood depends on your ability to execute your ability to develop the system. And there's times where you just need to think and you're not sure you maybe don't know which way to go, well guess what, what being a leader is you cannot bring everybody in the loop on all that stuff. Because then they will lack confidence because they don't, they don't trust your instincts the way you do, or they don't or they don't understand your process. So you can't unload your purse every time things get difficult in front of your staff, because your staffs gonna go wait a minute, what? You know, I've been in arrangements with fucking with employers where like, you have a down month and shit comes up and most fuckers like, well, if we don't get something's on here, nobody's getting paid for oh, okay, cool. Well, I guess I bet you I know what happens when that happens is you're completely fucked to try that once to see how that goes. You know, I Derya that is what shit leadership is good leadership. I've worked for companies that have had really down months, you know, especially in other and other industries, really down months and the owners silently go to the accountant. I know this because the accountant told the silent he goes, the accountant says, Hey, we got to transfer some money out of my personal account and stuff, and I gotta take some money out of my retirement, I gotta, I gotta take this hit to cover payroll for the next couple months. We weren't having work, you're not sending us home? Is that not paying, he's not taking the cut. It's like, I gotta keep these guys around, I trust that it will get better. I trust that I will get the work I trusted, I got the right team, meaning I am going to put fucking skin in the game, not fuck it. I'm gonna scratch all this off everybody who's in here for this thing and hope that they just fucking got it out. Right? That is the difference between good leadership and bad leadership. Bad leadership goes whatever. If someone saw my fault, this was bad. Fuck it, I'll dump all the employees or whatever that is dogshit leadership. And those people get exactly what they deserve in business, which is nobody working for them. Nobody trusting them does not work. So in relations, you don't be alone, you need to get into why we will open the gym owners revolution, the Facebook group. Listen, we talked to a lot of gym owners all the time, who even when they're trying to figure things out within your own business, you can't talk to your employees about the full scope of your goals, your hopes and your problems, because frankly, they are some of your problems. Right? And you also can't always talk to your spouse and significant other sometimes you can, but sometimes you also need them to be like, you know, they're gonna get nervous. If you tell your wife like Pat, three of my employees don't know what to do. I got it. You can't doubt a thing and leadership. Absolutely. How do you manage? How do you work around it, and sometimes leaking that doubt all over your own household as a business owner is going to create more problems in your home, then it's going to help you. And so that is why you need to find like minded people, you need to find the network. It's what I did. As a coach, as a new coach, I knew that I can't just sit there and figure things out and pretend like I'm sorting it out on the fly in front of clients who are paying me money. So find a network of coaches with experience who know what they're doing and run every question I have by them because I have to.



John Fairbanks 38:25

And that they have the same goals as you think is really important. The importance of knowing that the people that you are affiliating yourself with are in line with what you want to achieve. I think that's huge. Otherwise, you can get really sucked down. We know what it feels like when you're around incredibly negative people that are just sucking your lifeforce away. So you have to make sure you can find people that are in line with what you want to achieve, that you can be open with that are really lifting you up. It's really cheesy, but it's kind of like the idea of having your cup overflow with right. Your cup needs to be overflowing so you can then give to other people and be like no man, this is a great idea. Or not like hitting the brakes. We tried this idea and a fucking blew up in our face. Or it's Hey, man, that is a good idea. Let's think of the cheesy phrase like masterminds. Oh, there's big masterminds that you can join to mastermind something you can mastermind something in 15 fucking minutes if you have the right core group of people. So yeah, man, let's jump in, let's talk about this. Let's rip on this idea and see how we can help you



Tyler 39:39

and you already need you to get in this group as well because even though you may not believe it, you have experiences you have problems that you saw that someone else hasn't yet and we need you to contribute as well. Meaning While you may think man I got a long way to go I'm not swimming in money here but I want to learn from these people. I promise you you have a unique set of problems. You that You have solved you have been through unique situations that nobody else has, or at the very least nobody in this group has yet and we want to hear from you. We want this to be how we crowdsource problem solving. Because we can crowdsource the experience instead of us each having to spend 50 lifetimes. We have 50 people in this room, we have 100 people in this group that has 100 lifetimes that is 100. Businesses and coaches now that you can have access to that experience. So get in there, get involved, it is going to be my new favorite place in there as my new favorite people, that everybody's moving in the right direction. It's exactly what we've been, then I've been hoping that this thing would be for a really long time. So I gotta run guys, I gotta go test a concussion on my kid or whatever that means. I think it's just baseline testing, but I'm not sure it reads like they're gonna hit your kid in the head. So I gotta run. I gotta run to the school to do that. Thanks a lot for listening everybody follow me on Instagram at Tyler reference. Don't go to the Facebook group links in the description follow the gym at the gym owners podcast. And John, how can they find you?



John Fairbanks 40:58

Find me on Instagram at Jay banks. FL



Tyler 41:03

if you want in on the gear Academy message just directly because we want to let you know more about what it's about. It turns into a whole thing if I'm trying to explain it all on the fucking thing and not ever it's not entertaining to everybody. So if you want it on the gear Academy you want to spend a year helping us identify your next move and hold you accountable. Let's make sure you execute every step of the way. We're going to prioritize. We're gonna help you execute everything from selling supplements to your offers to your sales systems, videos to social media, organic leads, free leads, learning how to run ads, all that shit. That's what we're gonna roll out for you in the next year or so. You can get in your commitments you can pay monthly or you can save some money by paying up front but getting the gear Academy you can message us directly for information to find out if it's for you. You can talk to us. We'd happily jump on a call with you and run to give you the whole rundown. I gotta go guys thanks for this