Hiring and Managing Your Team

coach, gym, staff, people, owner, business, clients, expectations, week, sales, work, talked, meeting, personal trainer, checking, sell, coaching, leads, person

Tyler 00:01

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week's episode of the gym owners podcast. I'm your host, Tyler stone over there is John How are you doing, John? Hello Tyler. Guys, this week we're going to cover how to hire killer staff trainers and coaches for your GM that are going to help take your business to the next level and represent your brand to your clients and community at large. And they're gonna deliver a top notch service. In short, you can't, you're gonna have to develop them and hold them accountable to your expectations. But today we're gonna show you how to do just that. How to take the people that you're going to hire from out on the street and turn them into super valuable assets for your business for your clients, your community. And more. So, before we get started, make sure you go to the gym owners revolution Facebook group that link is in our description if you want in on the gear Academy our ongoing business coaching product that is at gym owners revolution.com So follow me on Instagram at Tyler effing stoning follow the show at the gym owners podcast on Instagram at John how can they find you?



John Fairbanks 00:55

You can follow me on Instagram at J banks f L



Tyler 00:59

Hiring coaches I would say is a hurdle that a lot of gyms very rarely clear in a way where they're where it's meaningful, very often it's this hodgepodge of part timers, which I'm not super super against, right. But still, when you have a bunch of people covering a couple classes or doing some personal training in and out of your business. The problem is they're never really fully invested in your business or your processes at all. And that becomes a bit of an issue. That's one of the biggest things I find is, if you're a gym owner, and you just have a few part time staff that are kind of helping you out. Great. I'm all about it. So you got personal trainers working in that are working mostly on sales commission, all that stuff is I'm into it, but you can't just let that still be the only job that they have is to show up for a couple hours a week. If that is the case, still, how are you making sure that they're good? How are you making sure that they're getting better? How are we making sure at the very least they're not doing worse? Like What? What? Driving down the road? There's a lot of things going on, there's distractions, there's what's in your mind, there's what's in the road, there's what you're where you're trying to go, there's other cars, there's all this stuff. Driving down the road without a frickin speedometer is super risky? Because that's just one piece of data, you just need to kind of know how fast am I going? What the hell is going on? And I see very often when it comes to coaches that they have no data? No, there's no nothing that you're that you're checking in on to go, how is this going? You may hear from their favorite client once every couple of months I call it like them. Or even worse, you might hear from their least favorite clients every day that you don't like them. But what is really going on? Are they delivering results? So what do they have? Can they grow into more for your business? Are they not that this is what we're gonna get into today?



John Fairbanks 02:53

What would you say using this predominant example? I think there's actually a lot of gym owners that have the tools or the means to be able to see all these things. But it's almost like you've taken a bunch of like black electrical tape and you've covered your dashboard like you've covered the speedometer, and you're just not looking at it. Because it's a fundamental thing, how do you establish how you know if your coaches are doing the right thing? How are you ? How are you holding them accountable? And I think if you are starting to think about this and hearing this, it's if you have been having a nagging feeling in the back of your head where it's like, am I getting the right amount of value for the staff and the coaches that I have in my gym right now? Or is my meeting with them enough? Like do I really know what's happening when I'm not there?



Tyler 03:39

Yeah. So let's go to the meetings first. This is very common, especially if you have the hodgepodge of part timers. Are you meeting with them every week? If you have someone covering your evening classes two nights a week, not doing any personal training, you're not probably not meeting with them at all. Right? Yeah, very unlikely. Because frankly, that's going to put a 50% increase in the amount of time you have to pay for them. You know, someone's only covering a couple hours a week. But it's still as important. I don't know, I don't know exactly how best to do this or where the line is, right? I don't know. But I do know that anything that you're not checking in on is very likely to progress. The biggest thing is coaches fitness sirs, it's just very common that if we don't have if there's not a push in every business I've been a part of, you have to be actively pushing out a thing in one direction. Everything that you don't apply pressure to that point in your business will soften. Always will sort of spill out the sides there. And that is one of the big important things about meeting weekly, twice a week, whatever it is having some sort of check in where goes, the expectations are this. Here's the data that says this and here's the gap between what you're doing and what I'm getting. Right that's that's the they don't all need to be shitty meetings they don't know They should also I'm okay with him being about the businesses at large too, because we looked at the, you know, I've been in businesses where we look over every single metric for the company as a company nearly every week, for about 90 minutes to beginning of each week. That's what we would do here last week, what did we do last week? What did you do last week? That numbers up there? What did you do last week? And by the way, the numbers aren't everything. And maybe I had you on this other project to some money sink or whatever. But like, it's there. It's known and everybody said, it all sits there. Yeah. And it's really important to check in on this stuff. Because then what you have is the business has its actual goals. And the business's goals aren't hidden from the goddamn company. From the rest of the employees, if your goal as a business owner is to get an extra 6000 in sales a month, go in here this next quarter, great. What can your staff do to help? One? Are they doing anything to help? Have they been equipped to help you? Do they know that that's a goal? Do they know that that's what they're working towards? Or are they just going to do whatever they do, and you're going to keep them in the dark, and then just hope that things work out for you that you're just going to fucking white knuckle it as the owner and just make six grand happen? Great, but what's the point of having a fucking team, if you don't get to work together on these projects, like they need, everybody needs to be on the same page, because your coaches will eventually your staff in the gym is eventually just going to revert to gym rat habits. They're just going to be chillin, chillin with a shaker bottle and kick their shoes off, and they're gonna work out on the clock, and they're gonna hit on people, they're going to hit on the clients, and that's what they're going to do, it will all fall back to that.



John Fairbanks 06:36

Yeah, I think what's important too, is if you're not, as a gym owner, if you're not taking a look at those things, and checking in, it's, it's absolutely guaranteed to, you're gonna miss that connection. So as a gym owner, it's like, if you if you're not, I guess, as I'm gathering my thoughts, it really comes down to, if people don't know why you want them to do a thing, they won't do a thing. And then the worst case scenario is that they're actually negative towards it. And that's super detrimental. And so if you find, as a gym owner, that you're paying coaches to do a task, or you think that they should be doing a thing, and you end up just having to do it. It's like your double pain, you're paying somebody to do the work.



Tyler 07:26

I mean, keep the money,



John Fairbanks 07:28

save the time and the money, because you're already having to do it. And it's more time expecting, it's always worse when you expect someone to do something they don't. And instead of it's like, it's like being a parent of a small child. It's like, well, I need the child to make its bed. Or I need it to be able to do a certain number of things that will help make the family's life easier. Everyone's got to kind of carry their load. And the reality is, if that child doesn't, it's like, fuck, well, I'll just I'll just do it for him. Because they're not going to do it. And I'll just do it for him. And the problem is that it ends up being so much more detrimental, you would rather have that thing that you're having your kid do suck 50% Bad 60% As long as you continue to perfect it, because this is always for farm families out here. It's, well no, my four year old does this, this this and I can't tell you how many people are like bullshit your four year old does my four year old just like fucking puts his hand up his ass and does nothing your kids



Tyler 08:29

a fucking idiot and your kids never been asked to do anything and your kids never did something and did it poorly. And now instead of me just yelling at him or doing it myself, we go through and we start to make corrections. So that point by the way is I don't want to get into this like your staff is like dealing with fucking children. But it absolutely is like dealing with children. There are people who are management and there are people who need managing. Okay, in your business you if you think this is the biggest fucking issue that I see gym owners run into when they have staff swishing, they're starting when they're growing small staff of 234 or five people in around there. And what happens, the gym owner thinks that every member of their staff, their coat, they're all aces and that they're all management. Like no, no, he manages that. No, most of them don't manage shit. And you're just doing that because you're hoping that they're going to take care of these other responsibilities that truthfully are yours right now. Until you have the right people in place. Are they managers or are they needing to be managed? If they are managers, what are they managing? The fact is nothing if there's no people, staff below them, they need to be managed fully.



John Fairbanks 09:42

And like it's



Tyler 09:43

everything from how much let's run into this a little bit. Right? So you need to meet regularly. What are your expectations for them, right what is what is your expectations from let's say a personal trainer who may be let's just let's just say has, who does personal trainer He has started has a couple of personal training clients, maybe you gave them one, maybe one of them, they brought on their whatever, right. And then let's say they coach a couple group club group classes a week. And they're hoping to parlay this into a full time group, maybe even give them a couple hours of just kind of like staffed desk time, right? Where it's like, I'll have you here greet people. So you know, just just be around whatever is the right training.



John Fairbanks 10:24

Before we go, I think it's you glossed over like a point where it's understand that you've already given one of the things have an expectation of a personal trainer, you have to establish is this a personal trainer that is on your staff wearing your short your shirt, and your apparel, and it says coach on the back or trainer on the back, however, your staff on the back? Or are they a gun for hire that you've brought in? Right, you're paying, you have a different relationship, if they are on staff, your personal trainer should be coaching fucking group classes, for sure, at least a couple because it's, it's a guaranteed lead machine, for the personal trainer and for you as a gym to be able to sell personal training, product and service. So that needs to be step one for certain is that if your personal trainers are two big time to be on the floor once or twice or a handful of times a week, then you're fucking up, you're making it very hard to be able to then sell those people to your general population of members.



Tyler 11:26

Which at that point, by the way, they'll just get what they get. This is at least then you're not out paying for it. And that's that's the structure you got, you got people on salary, this is nothing worse, you got people on salary, you got people putting in desk time, like just gym time, their front desk time, boy, you had better be tracking one every hour every minute. They need to be accountable for literally the tasks that they're doing within that time. And there better be some outcomes that are beneficial to your business that you are actively tracking, checking in with him on every week and correcting as you go so that those things can start to glide into some sort of optimized fucking, to up towards an optimized direction and direction towards an optimized situation. And let's just talk about sales in general, right? The way I like to set it up is I think as a gym owner, I think the gym owner, yes, you'll have your sales systems that will market for the person, right? You're always going to be if I'm at the gym, and we say we have 24 hours. So we have some group classes. And we have three or four personal trainers, part timers, if you will, or whatever, right? I'm going to want them to be making money doing business, I'm going to try to sell my clients like out of my gym towards his personal trainers. Absolutely. I want to get them leads, right? I want to generate via my email via my social media, when I get new clients in? Are they looking for personal training, group fitness? Or just, you know, 24 hour access? Right? That's right, what are you looking for? And if they say I want, I'm looking for personal training, or I want a combination of both I like to speak to portray, then I'm going to kind of use my judgment to identify who I'm gonna hand it off to that may simply be based on calendar availability, you can do that, I still think some of the best ways that I've seen is for the, you know, the gym owner to kind of really know have everybody or everyone on your staff's time blocked off and to really know when they're available to coach because sometimes if you've got part timers, it's only evening, this card comes in to train in the morning, that person is off the list. But that narrows it down, they can just match by personality goals or coaching type with whatever to get it narrowed down, but then you hand that lead off to the coach, obviously, and I want that coach closing, selling and coaching that lead. That's exactly how it needs to go as far as I'm concerned. And they need to do that. Because that's how they're actually going to the relationship is founded on the commitment and the choices that the client makes in the beginning. Yeah, so if you have a coach who can't behave professionally, who can't just show up, and you know, who just wants to show up and go, Alright, let's go, I'll be high energy and smiley, we're gonna have fun, that's all great, but like, I need him to retain these clients, I need him to, if the if they especially you guys, coaches are always always going to think that they're more professional and better than they are usually shorter. Maybe in their first couple of years, every one of them thinks they're about two years more advanced than they really are. So make sure that as you get going there like that's why I think the foundation of having them selling this starts out with no no, you wanted these results. You wanted these extra servers, I'm going to be the one fulfilling the services with you as the coach, which means then I'm accountable to the client for their results this way. This is why you don't just sell sessions, this is why we don't just do it all needs to be done with the end in mind. And the end result in mind is whatever their goal is, if it's weight loss, if it's a summer body, if it's if it's I just got to fit into the dress for the wedding. If it's I want to have power, whatever that is, whatever their outcome is, know that now the coach is married to that outcome, not just the person With the coach, and then the business, because as you're then meeting with staff that matters, that is efficiency. Are your coaches effective? Are they effective coaching, and effective in a lot of things, right? If I check if I get a bunch of complaints about a coach and I come in, and I gotta have a meeting with all the staff, maybe I pull this coach aside and it says, Hey, listen, someone complained about this, so and so. So this, like, we have issues that need to be corrected. The amount of times I see gym owners hear a little bit of gripe and just grin and bear it like, it's, it's really, really, really rough. So that just the accountability to the clients results in sales. That's a concept general, that's like a general expectation that I'm giving you the specifics from within the actual your weekly meetings, when you're meeting with them needs to go, what clients are you're working with, right? If you're working with clients, three days a week, that's 12 hours a floor time, perfect. So let's take a look, how are they literally checking on it? How are they doing? How should I do this all the time? And how is this project company going? How is this site working? How is this going? i Where are we at with this thing? Is this almost John? It is 80% of the way there, and you're gonna find that if you don't do that, you end up with coaches that don't get people results and your retention takes a massive hit. And that's just one thing. That's the most important thing, in the end, just what goes on on your floor, and most aren't even checking. They're not even accountable, holding folks accountable to results in a man in a conversation about how the clients they're working with are doing and are they making progress or not? There's lots of candy, or can you not, you know,



John Fairbanks 16:38

there's a lot of KPIs that are out there that you can track as a gym owner and that you should be tracking. But when it comes to sales, if you want to be able to increase sales, and you want to be able to increase revenue and profitability and everything, there's one KPI that matters. And if you wanted to boil it all down and simplify the number, you could say, tada, we can only have one KPI that we focus on nothing else, we cannot focus on anything else, what is it going to be? And it's going to be how many conversations you had today. Because if you have a coach or a gym owner, or staff members that are actively engaging, and having conversations with your clients and with your members, not fucking about the weather, but about what you know, to be important, which is the different products that you have the different services that you have had to be like they are maintaining that professionalism, you are having the necessary conversations that will lead to sales, that will lead to accountability, that will lead to opportunity. When you really think about it, if you come at this thing, and you're a total Schmuck, and you try and oversell a position or oversell something, you're now playing the game of like, whoa, what was my like, sales process like or what was the system? Like? Or? Or what were my objection strategies that I have, compared to? How many times as you as a gym owner, and even for us, from our perspective, when we're talking and we have the opportunity to make a sale? I can't tell you how many times I was just having a conversation with someone who was my ideal client. Right? But it wasn't a hard sell. I wasn't doing anything. I was merely having a conversation and it turned into Hey, can I please give you money? Yeah. And it's like, yes, absolutely you can. And that is how the power of having a conversation can then lead to you increasing that revenue increase, increasing that profitability. And by



Tyler 18:43

folding your staff in on what your business's actual goals are, let's say you got a quarterly goal, a revenue goal and you've broken it down. We're like, we want to increase our supplement sales by a couple $1,000 a month for sure. We know, you've been lagging behind whatever that is right. I want to sell some more personal training and our morning classes are taking a dive right or whatever that is. Your coaches need to be shipped. That's the focus for this month. They got to know like hey, I really need to get this up, we got to get this up. It doesn't mean you have to be pushy about it but be having conversations with people right, same thing struggling to sell nutrition coaching well Christ how many times you talking to people via your you're doing it as a business via your email and your social media and your advertising? But the actual people on the ground who have the relationships with your clients? Are they doing anything about it? They're the ones that the people are talking to about these things? Oh, I saw that on Instagram or, or what is this about like, can they they don't need to be slick and they don't need to be like hardcore closers like you said all the fuckin all that sales. There's nothing worse than being a true sales consultant. That's just whatever you sell software I guess you can be pushy and short sighted but if you need people to truly be invested personally, in the process, you both need to truly come to like an agree means on how things are going to go forward because I can buy software and I can fucking ignore it two days later, right? If I'm buying the next 12 weeks of my fitness journey, whatever that's going to be nutrition working out all this stuff like, I can't just ignore that two days later. Like it's a real commitment, it is different. Don't let people tell you that those things are completely the same. But in doing so, selling supplements is more about is it available you reminding people that's it, and maybe you do a little bit of push, you know, use just we used to do this and other businesses were like, trying to sell like maintenance contracts, right? Of course, we're always trying to sell as many as we can every month, no matter what, right every day, the goal would be to sell as many of those as possible. But that's not really how we do it within the business, right. But within the business, we may spend a month where we may give you a double bonus for selling them during this month, just to make sure that that's the attention we're trying to put on this thing. Or everybody gets we would do stuff like everybody gets 100 bucks if the business crosses over. Right mark? Right this month, if we can sell 100 of these. This month, each one you guys are getting extra 100 bucks, or whatever the deal is, right? And in doing things like that they're just an extra focus on like the thing you're focused on, you need to bring them in and bring that to their attention as well. Because then every week we need to go okay, how do we do on this ditch that we're trying to dig this month? How far did we get here this week? From what we got four weeks ago? How do we get short? What can we do about it? Get some feedback back? Oh, it didn't, it didn't go this well, this way or I'm not comfortable with this, you'll find out where they're ill equipped. So you can actually start to level up their skills. So you don't just have fucking do nothing gym rats hanging around your gym, just putting out a vibe or being too cool or pretentious or whatever. Like just generally being the the worst goddamn person you could fucking hire. And I know a lot of them. You know what I mean? And and it's, it's if they're not held accountable to those things, and you have to ask yourself, What in the fuck are they doing for me? Very often, it's nothing.



John Fairbanks 22:04

And it's the frog in boiling water, when it comes to some of your staff and some of your coaches to where they probably didn't start that way with you. They probably were with you from the very beginning, I can't tell you how many times you and I see we're not in the boiling water. So when we get exposed to it, it burns us and we get mad. And then we want to tell the gym owner, how much they should just fire everybody that they have on staff. And because we are coming from that outside perspective, but I cannot tell you how many times we have experienced this directly where it's it is the coach or the trainer, or now an admin, a manager, whatever this staff person is who we want you to fire and we want you to fire them six months ago, we get exposed to them. And the problem is, they probably were with that gym owner. And this is what happens is that they're with them from the beginning. And everyone's hustling, and there's lots of bro time. And maybe you're not even married yet. You haven't even gotten married, you haven't even found your wife. So this is the dude that you're spending a lot of time with. He's already your friend, and now your business is fucked. So what happens is, dude, we're in this together, and we're gonna scale. And as the gym becomes more successful, your buddy becomes more successful, and you keep doing that haven't done anything. They just were in the right place at the right time. And they didn't fuck off. Because they just weren't motivated enough to leave to go make more money. And now you're having more success as the owner, and you are now feeding them. And they continue to do just what they've been doing. And the problem is, that now they've been taught, probably subconsciously, I don't want to say this dude is a total asshole and has been the whole time. But subconsciously, you have now just proven to him that it's, oh, I can make more money by doing the same or less than what I was doing before. And that continues for years. And then you've



Tyler 24:08

never met a coach who went, you know what I want to do? I want to make sure that I get a report to my gym owner at the end of each week, like how my clients are doing or weight loss clients, how much weight have they lost? How much like, like, I don't want to be accountable that coaches are not gonna volunteer that but that's your fucking business. Like your business is results for them and you're not even tracking it. And the people who are supposed to deliver it, you're just not thinking of this is the thing we talked, we don't have a sort of way back a while back, like stop hiding from the fucking scoreboard. Right? That is and that's what you're doing not just in on that thing, but with every other piece in your business is if you're not holding your coaches accountable to metrics and expectations every week and then correcting it. You are playing the game as a fucking first grader where they're like, No, everybody wins. It's cool. And it's like fuck yeah, I'm sure all these kids they're just as good. No one kid had 45 points, the rest of these kids didn't do fuck all like, you do need to understand that there is a point where the scoreboard fucking matters. And this is it like this is your coaches will always default to doing less never ever once have they come in and gone, oh, you know what I, I want to make sure that like we're making if your coaches are coming to you going, I have an idea that's gonna make us a bunch of more money, make the business more money, it's like, I think that's just a way to make you more money, which I'm all about it. But your coaches, we talked about this before, your coaches do not give a fuck. If your business grows, they don't care. Very rarely are they actually invested in that process, they don't care, and it hurts to hear that. But they don't give a shit. So you have to make them care, because it's a condition of their fucking employment. If there's nowhere else that you're going to go, if it's actually you know, in a place where the merit of your labor matters, where like, if they're not making any money off of you or your progress, your performance consistently declines that you stay there. And being nice, and not creeping out to clients is like that's a prerequisite. Working at a gig goes to work at a gas station. And they're like, Don't weird the people out if you're a cashier, and quit trying to fuck the people that come through the door. Okay, that's the bare minimum for coaches. And sometimes that's the maximum that's required for them, because I see them not even required to get results or to worry about sales. And we haven't even talked about average ticket prices and stuff like that being good at sales, or your sales, closing ratios and things like this, which does start to matter, as you start to fold them into a more sales centric role as the as the role develops, you know, if they're gonna coach more than hopefully they're selling more, if they're able to market their own services. Let's talk about this a little bit, right? Yeah. Is it as far as marketing your own services? Do I expect him to be a social media content wizard? No. But maybe if it's from within your gym, you're as a business owner, you're probably going to be making content. That's the spotlight on this coach, does this coach have personal training available? Is that person that coaches sharing and actively sharing the content that's gonna get them leads directly? Is there if you make content for them, say, Hey, will you share this to your feed, because, you know, hopefully, your people want to coach and if they're not willing to do that, maybe that's a bit of a red flag. If you're like if your coaches need personal training clients, and they're not willing to share content that you've created for them, or simply reshare stuff, or posts on their own, about trying to get more leads, because that's how they get fed. That's where the bulk of their hopefully the bulk of their pay is coming from, is one on one sessions, or the or the coaching coaching hours. Then what the fuck are you doing here? Like, what is the point if you're if your business's goal is growth, and this person does not want to help fill their plate at all, and they just need you to fill their play for them? They've they're already fucking very diluted about what this goal or what this role is for them.



John Fairbanks 28:10

We were talking about, you're never going to have a coach that comes in and wants to be able to just be like, how can I make you more money boss? But how can you manipulate that outside of like gym making it the stipulations? It's it, money matters. And what you determine as important is what matters. Like we've talked about this before, but it's like even from a sales perspective, from our experiences from past jobs and people that we know that had past jobs, it's bonus structures for salespeople have to always be evolving. Yes. And the reason is, is because salespeople get really adept and smart as to Oh, the company wants me to do X, Y, and Z. So I'm gonna go hard in the paint to get X, Y and Z because that's how I make more money. And as a business, if you're not careful, and you don't adjust those metrics, you're gonna get super unbalanced and super fucked in one particular direction because your salespeople are hungry Hungry fucking hip hippos when they're going after a fucking thing. And you have to evolve it so that you can pull that ravenous pack back and put them in another attention spot to where you are systematically moving the business in the right direction, but you're not allowing things to go completely off the rails so it requires a lot of management and a lot of checking.



Tyler 29:32

So let's get into also the ticket prices, average ticket prices, things like that. How can they get in if you are present, if you're providing them with leads and they're getting their own leads, there's those numbers now you're able to see how many sales conversations did you have this week? Like, I got you three leads that I scheduled the meetings for you. You sat and met with them, are you actually following up with them on how those sales meetings went? Is it just a shrug? They didn't want anything? Some of that should be documented very likely, in my opinion. If you're letting multiple people sell through presenting lead, I do like to have some of that stuff living on our spreadsheet, where it goes, Okay, well, I want to know this person came in, we talked about this, what's the reason they did kind of just whatever it is, if they declined, whatever if they bought what they buy, you know, and I think that that stuff, one, you just get into basically like a closure rate, right, just close at whatever percent of people come in this is how many of close, but the real metric that matters, then is the ticket price that you're closing them for. Because if you use a sales system, like the stuff we build, whether you're giving clients the ability to make choices, and you're presenting them top down, and you're connecting with them on their goals and their needs, and the products that fit their needs in between, and then you drop the stuff down, you just let them choose, if they're doing that, right. That ratio is pretty mathematically pretty solid. I don't I don't freak out about any one thing over another at all. There's no one high end ticket stuff, that's like you did a great job. And there's no base sale, cheap sale, that means you did a shitty job in my opinion. But the averages start to work out. So right, you need to be checking in on this stuff. So I know like man, you're just if you get somebody's coming, they're just selling people in the city, it's even new leads. And everybody's just using knobs to go back to a group or, or 24 hour stuff, or they're just choosing the cheapest option possible. Maybe you need to start addressing their execution of the sales process. And maybe it's not because they're a slacker, maybe it's just if they haven't been trained on it. And now when you are meeting, you check this data, you've held them accountable, you've identified a gap in either their skill or execution. Now you can actually develop this fucking employee, like you're in a business, not fucking the fitness business. Again, this isn't just about this guy who likes to go to the gym, I should give him a key and a job, which is what I see a lot.



John Fairbanks 31:51

And if you're doing this, you depend on the number of staff that you have. So let's assume you have three staff that are capable of doing this in combination with you. This now gives you as the gym owner, you are no longer the person that is now doing this process. And this is the importance of having a sales process and system that is simple enough, that is step by step that is choice based, that essentially just allows somebody to not matter how strong of a salesperson they are. But do they have the ability to take a customer by the hand and guide them along a sales journey that leads them to the opportunity to make a choice for themselves. And if we've done all the right things on the back end, because it's what we fucking do, and we work with gym owners to customize the process is that there is no bad option to then be chosen by the client. So it's all a win. But if you've now enabled and empowered your staff to be able to do that, you've now sunk a hook into them mentality wise to where they can make more money if they have the ability to take someone through that process. And you can even throw into where there is the opportunity or potential for commission, because they are closing that sale. They have the ability to close and then they can fulfill. And then if you're following up, now you have a reason to meet. So all of a sudden, it's almost like this process of just empowering your people with the right tools. And that gives them the responsibility as just the bare minimum of what the expectation is for them to work. That it's like it rolls is the cyclical process that continues to allow you to be sharp, and then allows you to hold them accountable, they then make more money. Like it's in stark contrast into what we've seen before Tyler, where we see coaches that coach primarily on the fucking floor, and the coach group, almost 80 to 90% of their time, and they're making ungodly amounts of money. You just can't do that. Because then it becomes that's exactly.



Tyler 34:01

All I had was a deal. What was I going to cover here? John, there was an Oh, one of the things. We talked about meeting regularly, setting expectations and all this stuff. I want to show you a way here to make this process one. Here's how you do this wrong. If your coaches meetings are exclusively about teaching exercises, right? You got new coaches, some of them don't know things, right? So I get it, hey, I read I prefer you because you're gonna have somebody in there who can teach you how to deadlift. They have their own way. Is there a way you need it done in the gym? Because you do identify that some ways are, some things are right, and some things are wrong. coaching philosophy stuff needs to be. What's the word? I think culturally, it needs to be managed top down a little bit. I think there's some autonomy that needs to be represented or needs to be present, so that the coach itself can feel empowered to become their own coach. But yeah, you got to teach them a little bit about movement and exercises and things like this, but don't Turn this into fucking seminars. Yeah, your staff meeting turning into like how to exercise seminars is the dumbest fucking thing you could possibly do as a business owner, pay to have them go somewhere for a couple of days for training, pay to have them do an online course, make sure that you keep them. The one thing I want you to do, though, right, you can still develop them as a coach as the way that they're in coaching and making sure that they're keeping people safe. This way. One, injury data, if anyone is hurt in your gym, in a class or while being coached, just needs to be written down. It's not about punishment. But we need to know we need to know what happened, how it happened, how we can avoid it. Otherwise, it can run amok, it may just be people falling over it, maybe the fucking front door is slippery when people come in, I don't know, right. But if anyone just gets a little thing we need to know about it. The business needs to know about it, it needs to exist somewhere where the business can know about it. The second one is as you're having these checkups about the clients, whether it is injury rate, or what their results are, the coach should if they're humble, and fucking, just understands that they don't know everything, they should go, Hey, I'm having trouble with this, I'm having trouble teaching this person how to do this, or I'm trying to, I'm having a hard time getting over this one thing because maybe they have a back or a hip or a personal preference, or they just don't like this exercise. Now you're coaching a coach about a specific problem, that they've actually understood that problem, and you can work them through that. And that's how you get them a little bit better each week at a time. But coming in and going, Okay, let's talk about hamstrings Fuck off, you're not going to get anywhere like just you need to be actively solving problems that they have, instead of trying to deliver some for 810 year education on your time that just isn't fucking practical, and is not practical to what the people in your gym are actively trying to do right now. The problem is sometimes you don't know what problems you're trying to solve. And that's a great time for general education. But you know what, I got something very specific that I'm trying to figure out. Let's advance my skill set by teaching me how to solve that problem. And then we can talk about the overarching principles after that, at least, that now has a fan effect immediately on that coach, and that client and your gym and your business. Now, it's all better now as opposed to teach in some dorky movements specific shit, that just your clients don't care about, your coach is going to forget about in fucking, if it doesn't have an application basis for them right away, they're gonna forget about that shit in two hours anyways,



John Fairbanks 37:39

you can you can, you can learn a foreign language for for six fucking eight years, you'd go live in a foreign country and learn how to speak it. And if you leave, and never practice it again, and move to some other fucking place where they don't speak that language, you WILL FUCKING forget how to speak the language. So the idea that you somehow think because you check in once a month, or once every couple of months and you do a deep fucking dive on who on who the fuck knows some kinesiology based bullshit that you've nerded out on? Because you got to whoever,



Tyler 38:15

whoever's head, you've got your fucking whoever has you've got your head up on the internet. If it's if you're doing knees over toes stuff this week, or if it's what a DJ was saying? Heels over metatarsal this week, and what the neck, whatever the fucking fashionable, squat University shit, where it's a bunch of pretentious people being pretentious about generalities. And what's better, and what's worse, how about at this point, in those meetings where you're trying to educate, let's educate in the context that they're actually using it in with this person and this specific problem, a problem they want to solve, probably have identified that they're trying to get over that way, they're coming to you with something, and they're actually invested in it, instead of just like, you know, today, we're gonna cover it, blah, blah, blah, 101. And then next week, it's blah, blah, blah, 102. If you're trying to run that level of coaching development stuff within your gym, you better just monetize that and sell that to hundreds of gyms at a time, because it's the only way the scale of that makes sense. And people are already doing that. So just pay to send your coaches to that.



John Fairbanks 39:20

Yeah. And notice how far down the list. This part of the coaching development was in our list of what you should be doing with your coaches when you are meeting with them. All the things that you should be going over. There are easily seven things that are happening every single week before we get to this part. And it doesn't mean that it's not important. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't be trying to help your coaches develop their craft and how they coach. But there is a major, major part that's being completely and totally neglected. When it comes to how you With the expectations that you have of the staff you have, that makes them more valuable to you as the gym owner. Because the problem is, and we've had some gym owners prove this to be beyond Correct. You can fire every single person that you have that works for you. And you can hire people before the next week. We've watched it happen. We literally watched a coach, a gym owner, realize that there was something wrong, wait a week to drive to that location, fire everyone, and then hire a complete new staff within a one week period. And now all, all of us, we've talked about it before, so I want to rehash it, but it's like, all of those headaches are gone. Because the problems that were systemic, the expectations were adjusted. And now he has a new staff that comes in. But that's only possible to fire every motherfucker that's in your spot. If when you do move those goalposts because maybe you're evolving, maybe you are listening to the gym owners podcast, and my god, the big, bald, bearded dudes know what the fuck they're talking about. And now I'm starting to make changes. If you move that goalposts and you work in a state, you can't just fire a motherfucker, because it's Tuesday, then you need to have a clear track record and understanding of the No, these are the expectations of their employment here. They are not upholding them, and then fucking fire him. But it has to be part of it. Because there is no way to like, I don't know, good guy or massage your way out. If your staff just won't do what they need to be doing.



Tyler 41:48

That Jamie talks about. We ran into a new sales system, we needed some better expectations for professionalism, because they're definitely lacking in that regard. There were a few complaints and rumbling was an issue that started becoming addressed directly, it took a little bit of time to realize that they were not moving in the direction towards these new expectations. And do just pull the band aid off right away. What happened immediately following was then there was feedback from all the bunch of other members, the people who, by the way, your coaches and clients, if they're not delivering value, they're taking money from you, remember that right? Your clients or members are giving money too. So keep that in mind. The people who give money to the business, then after these coaches were gone, went, Oh, thank God, like, oh, that and then once they're out of the picture, then it all starts to come to light. And all he said was I should have done this a very long time ago. Very, very, very long time ago. So that's it, you come in, you can set these expectations immediately. And a coach who wants just some cush gig where you can just fucking hide out and bring all this store all his shoes and your fucking office or whatever, like fine, right? But that guy's not going to want this job then because there's actually expectations of professionalism on a work results site like it's a, it's a job, right? If he wants to sit back and just run the deal, then he can do it himself. Right? Go open your own business, then you do whatever you want, it can be whatever you want it to be, if you're within your business, you're the one managing them. So fucking manage them. That's what it all comes down to just managing them. Now, for those of you that already have some staff, don't go in and fire them all right away just because I told you so because I don't know them. But I promise if I met them, I might give you some advice very quickly, right I got I can sniff that out pretty fast. But I do think that you do need to start setting some expectations. Now I do recommend, I am inclined to come in and go, here's how it's gonna be from here on out. It's probably not the best way to go either. But you do need to start with the meetings, hey, we got started meeting each week. Right? That's gotta happen. Or whatever these meetings, you gotta make these weeks, they're not ops, you got to make them not optional. If you got to pay him an hourly wage for that and do it. I don't know what to tell you in the long run. It's fucking worth it. It just really really is. You do it while they're there. Also, it probably is a little bit easier to do as much as you can to make the meetings not painful because people are resistant to that and are fundamentally resistant to showing up to the meeting. They're probably already gonna go right. If they don't understand that, then they gotta go if they like, to come back to work for I don't wanna have to stay for No, I don't want to try to, I gotta meet you for what we got to talk about my job once a week. I gotta spend an hour talking about my job. Search so and so this is where all of the red flags I'm planting the seed for you right now all of these red flags will start to become very evident as you actually start to tell these people what to expect. But just start with the meeting and the meetings don't come in once you start having them don't come in and be don't be a Hellraiser don't come in with some hard shit just go. So this month, here's what we want to do. I'd like to increase these sales or whatever this is. Here's what I'd like us to do. Let's check in on this. Here's what we're trying to accomplish, here's the things we're going to do here. Here's what we're gonna do to get us there. And then I'm gonna check in next week and make sure that these things are happening. What can I do to help you guys help us do this? Right? If they want to feel heard and have some ideas, great, if their ideas suck, acknowledge them, most, their ideas gonna suck, if, because they don't actually care about your profitability. They just care about things that they think are cool and neat. So they'll very easily help you get sidetracked don't allow it, okay, but let them feel hurt. And then you need to go through it. Next week, you're going to meet again, they show up and these meetings need to be consistent. Even if there's times where you think you don't have a bunch to cover, then what are you managing this week? What are you trying to accomplish this week? If your staff doesn't have a focus that they're trying to develop and go for? And what is this week for you and your business? Hoping week? This is we're back to hoping we're hoping things get better this week. That's what you're going to tell your staff in that meeting. I hope you guys sell more. It's like, no, I need you to sell this much. Do you have these time slots open? What can we do to get those time slots full? Should I post more on social media about it? Can I make some content? Will you share it? Right, that's now how we actually solve these problems as a team.



John Fairbanks 46:12

And make sure it's a two way street. As you are meeting with staff, there needs to be the expectations that if they're going to come to you especially if when you do your one on ones, they need to come to you with action items, things that they want to be working on, or they are going to be doing this week in combination where you have to have your shit together, which means you need to be more fucking organized. So if you're a gym owner is kind of like well, you know, we'll figure it out or whatever is frickin fucking nebulous or your it's your it's a scatterbrain is take a goddamn hour, clean your goddamn desk and then make a decision on what you're going to do, what the purpose is that your business is having. And that will then allow you to be able to hold everybody accountable. Otherwise, you're always going to be like, Well, I just don't know when things aren't working. Like.



Tyler 46:59

Guys, there's other things here with this. If your gym does community events, who's running it? When is it going to be right? What are you doing for it? What's your responsibility, if there are things that need to get done and you need to manage them like a real business, I think a lot of times we get into it a little bit got into the fitness business because I mean, I take the things I learned in other business, and I was gonna not do the things that didn't want to do apply to that business. I was just gonna do it was all going to work because it was this type of thing. Some of the stuff you just can't just can't overlook. And remember if you come in, you start setting these expectations. And they don't do anything from week one to week two. And you do then you say what do I need to do to equip you to be successful for this next week. And you help them when you meet in the middle and they still underperform or even worse underperforming is one thing. Then you fire them, you fire them, right the fuck now you figure it out, you strap your boots on, you get back in and you cover whatever it is that they're doing, and it is what it is. But this is your business, not theirs. If they got a girlfriend 30 miles away, they'd quit your fucking job, they quit this fucking job anyways, it's very important to know this, right? They'll leave you with two weeks notice tops, guys, if they're not doing it for they're costing you a lot more by letting them stick around. I promise you will get somebody new if these expectations are set in the beginning. Your business is fucking awesome. It really is really, really awesome. If you have meetings with your coaches about let's just say yearly goals. We used to do this. We help the gym with a slot. Every single coach, you know what they said they wanted to do? They didn't want to do more things than they wanted. It was always one or two things. The one that was consistent was I want more money, for sure. I want to make more money next year. Okay, what do you want to do for that? And it's like it's some of them will have some fucking It was basically nothing. It was oh, well to charge more for my thing. Or they would have some specialty program project that they actually didn't give any thought to. It's all about them and not about the members. And so I want to do this new program. I'll do a program like this just because it's a cash grab for them. I think I'll make like five grand and I'll just do yeah, we'll just sell this specially miraculously you're going to sell this thing and it's not about clients client need he hasn't it's not based on any data out there that people want this it's just like, I have an idea. Well, I can respectfully decline a lot of fucking gym rat ideas a lot for what they have for my business hands down so so just know that if given if left to their devices, they want more money, and just like their pet projects to be wildly successful for no fucking reason and without giving it any thought or effort just so just know that that is the default, John that by the way that was to a man, every single coach that was gone through and given their yearly goals, more money, or more money and My pet project, I want you to build it, sell it, market it and execute it and pay me for it. So Fuck you, dude, what the fuck. So you these people are fucking delusional and entitled.



John Fairbanks 50:13

And I cannot. And the key to your success as a gym owner to be able to triple the revenue for every single person that steps foot in your gym, whether they're new, or whether they're existing, the key to be able to double the profits that you're making currently, right now, unless you're making over 30%. And then God bless you, you're right where you need to be. But if you're not making 30% profit as a business, to double that, right, the keys to that is by adding nothing fucking new, stop trying to add more shit, to be able to try and make more money. If you can't sell at that level, what you already have. Do you think adding more variables and more fucking services and more products? is somehow the goddamn answer. It's not.



Tyler 51:03

And that's described, variables, service products, all that stuff. You have to now manage and execute and monitor their sales, the success, the outcomes for the clients, the execution of the process going on. You can't manage and fucking turn up the volume on a single fucking thing that you're already doing with staff you already fucking have. And you want to just let's just chase new shit. Great. Right? It's it's, it's, it's it's the dumb, it's it's lottery mentality. And I see so many gym owners, they get this, they think you're going to launch an online course or you're going to launch a new program, a new program, and it's never, it's never the game changer for your business that you fucking wish it was. It's not unless it's able to be done consistently, forever, and grown and developed and become a permanent part of your business. I'm all about some one offs. And the time's right. But you cannot just start doing this stuff. Just like right now. Like, I'm just gonna turn this on and make 10 G's and then I'll figure it all out as we go. It's like, Well, what a wasted opportunity, because you could have made 10 G's every fucking month if you use your fucking brain and the time was right and, and you had all this other stuff in place.



John Fairbanks 52:19

Here's because I see this happen. There's a reason why it happens this way. But here's another way to be able to reframe this and look at this so that you can fully appreciate where you're at, if you fall yourself becoming prey to this idea where I need to get more in or I want to do something new. It's the equivalent of a family that just keeps having children. And you're not any good at raising those children. But somehow you think that you will somehow get better at raising said children by having more. So you just keep having more babies in



Tyler 52:59

life. One, perhaps absolute abomination. Continue.



John Fairbanks 53:04

And you know, these people, you see these people that are out there, where you're like, Holy fuck, how are they continuing to have more kids? It's a goddamn disaster. Like they cannot. And so that's every piece of your gym is a baby that you need to be caring for every product, every service is what you need to be tending for and caring as it grows, and is able to do more for you and be able to live on its own and be successful. And if you can't fucking do that, it's not like adding more. Nobody was like, hey, having one kid is hard. I should have like five. This is a good idea. And that's what I used to do.



Tyler 53:41

Yeah, yeah, some of you fools keep launching new programs and bringing on new staff and doing new distracted stuff. You're like, Casey Anthony having five more kids or something since the first like, not be the best move. So get good before you scale up. Get good before you get bigger get good. Get good, get good at managing things. You need good stuff by the way, you need a good team I shit on a lot of it because it's just like, I bet who you got sucks. Not all of them. But I bet if you start looking I bet I just bet man, I don't know what to tell you. There's so many bad personal trainers, and there's so many bad coaches out in the world. And I think it's hilarious that every single time I talk I can walk into a gym and see dog shit exercises and terrible coaching. Like I see it and that's just in the coaching, the coaching the client issue, right? has very little to do with how they are with the business but you know, how they're gonna do with the business if that's how they manage just coaching a human being right. So I can see that and identify that immediately. Almost everywhere I go, I can go. I'm in some maybes but I can definitely go bad. What the fuck Bad, bad, bad, right? And so I think it is really insane. Every time I talked to a gym owner, they got just aces. Like, what the fuck? Everybody thinks and blesses their hearts. Just a guy working directly every single time he gets an inquiry, a new person wants to come in and train or do some coaching out of there. Every time his gut tells him, it's really good every time and I was like, I just I will work for it. So it's like, I'm not gonna break your heart. I'll help you set the expectations, but I'm not. Listen if it was up to me, no, no, no, no, no, no. And so you have to make your own decisions. But again, make them based on data. And don't just because you like the person before you like the person for a long time. Don't just let that cloud the whole thing. So I do think that you can, you can decide what metrics you're hiring this person to advance, right? I need these metrics to advance. I need more of this anymore. Why are you hiring them? So they can hang out? seems great for them not for you. So what purpose do they serve in your business? That translates to profit to money to a problem being solved? Then next week, we're gonna see how you did on those. And then what do we need to do to help you and then the next week, and then the next week, and that's how it's done. And but you do have to do that very consistently, it has to be consistent and has to be across the board. I have seen implementation of this fall flat on its face because the gym owner gets bored, doesn't like to be there because there are the only businesses across the board that grow and are successful. Other types that end up getting to the point where they have more meetings than you think you should. It is because you have all the



John Fairbanks 56:28

fucking plan. Exactly.



Tyler 56:30

I hate having a meeting to talk about what we talked about last meeting, and then spending the second half of the meeting talking about what we got to talk about next meeting. I hate that there's a bit to get to that point. I'm, I'm out the whole thing, right, I'm out. But there is a point. businesses tend to meet the most as long as those businesses are efficient, they are much more successful, much more successful than the businesses that don't so if you're not having staff meetings, I'm betting 100% Your staff is ripping you off. Not actively, but it's costing you way more than you're getting in return. Now that I also identify the go through, what's the worst case scenario if I fire this guy, what's likely and what's the worst? The worst ain't that bad. Not a lot of people actually leave either with a coach that is not necessary to open a fucking business so and I'm guessing if they were go getters they'd already been there or they'd be better for you. So keep that in mind guys go home I guess your homework is to go fire all your coaches and staff and tell them it always does turn into that doesn't it shit I'm sorry guys, I expect them to be better. The ones that are better are going to be great for you and the ones that aren't they were never they were never good for you. So let's rock and roll. That's all we got for today. Go to follow the follow on Instagram the show at the gym owners podcast follow me at Tyler F and stone fell John at J banks f l go to the gym owners revolution.com Your Academy by the time you're hearing this you'll be close to being able to get in in June if you want to get on the list. But we're filling up month to month very very very quickly. So we want to make sure that we can help everybody kick ass and so there's limited availability. If you want to get on this program you want to flex your business big time this summer. You want to be making things work, go in there and get on that waiting list and we'll make sure we can get you in as soon as possible.



John Fairbanks 58:18

Yeah and if you want to be able to have us take a look at your Instagram account right you don't know what's going on or you feel like you're trying it nothing seems to be sticking is that hit us up is that this is something that we are doing multiple times a month it's borderline one on one one on one work with Tyler and I we will take a look diagnose what we're seeing on your Instagram account what your overall strategy is looking like and then some simple and easy things that you can tweak and start taking action on immediately after we're done with the call that you can run with and then we just want to be able to see be successful we have and it will end up with you getting more leads and higher quality leads and you'll be able to start having your Instagram account stop being such a pain in the ass or something that you have to do and something that now is actually working for you while you're not actively there



Tyler 59:09

those this is this is the most value you will ever catch me giving away for free so what we do on those calls and direct i If you all in any other format asked me to hop on a call with you the answer is fucking no no I don't want to hop on a call with you. I don't I really don't. But for these ones it's epochal John I write in the pocket. We've now we're like 550 Plus Instagram accounts we've gone through and so John is pretty sharp with these we're able to make him really concise. We're really happy to help you guys with this specific part of this project and we're doing this for free.



59:43

Know that right? So



Tyler 59:46

This is just a good spot for us to settle in and start to deliver some value in a way that I think is the best low hanging fruit for some of these gyms that you're new to, you're starting or you're just a little bit stuck on your social media. This is one of those things. It's John, I've become so proficient at this single piece that we're very happy to help. And this one is pretty easy for us. Okay, so please get onto this will not be fucking free for very long, literally, because of the that every time I get feedback after the fact and it's like, how much would you have paid for this? Did you know what you were going to learn? They hope that number keeps going up. Okay, so just know that like, get this while it's free because if we do ever do this paid, it's going to be fucking, you'll you'll definitely wish you got it for free. Trust me. So it helps us keep our eyes sharp. It helps us instead of just creeping on Instagram accounts. This sucks. This sucks. Here's what they should do. I didn't like the fact that we went through 500 accounts and didn't help those people. That's where this came from. Right 500 accounts I know exactly what I want and what I don't want on those. And I went shit and that's where this came from. It's like, Okay, now let's just do it for people that actually want to help it'll do it. Instead of us just sharpening our teeth, and talking shit. So it makes us feel constructive instead of just being a hater, which is a little little exercise and growth for me. So thanks a lot, guys. We'll see y'all next week.