"Real" Fitness Business Talk with Pete Dupuis

I'm back from another successful Fitness Summit out in K.C. and find myself buried in email, phone calls to return, and all kinds of other CSP-related tasks piling up on my desk.

It's a good thing Tony and I arranged a nice little "content swap" on our flight out to Missouri!  Those of you who enjoyed his answers to my business questions last Friday will hopefully enjoy the insight I shared on his site today.  

#TFS16 - Come for the info. Stay for the Smirnoff.

I needed a good image to sum up the Fitness Summit weekend, so naturally I went with the picture I found on my phone of Mark Fisher realizing he'd just been "iced" by David Bromberg in the hotel lobby.

Check it my pseudo guest post on Tony's blog here: "Real" Fitness Business Talk with Pete Dupuis

Business Q&A With Tony-G at 30,000 Feet

So I was sitting on the couch last night, thinking about the fact that I’d be hopping on a 3+ hour flight to Kansas City with Tony Gentilcore the following morning (Fitness Summit weekend is upon us), and wondering what I should blog about this week.

And then I had an idea…

What if I were to jot down a few questions relating to Tony’s experience in 6-months of his “I’m not a businessman…I’m a BUSINESS, man” Experiment and then simply slide my laptop in front of him once we hit a cruising altitude?  He wouldn’t say no to that, would he?

He didn’t.

Here is some awesome insight for any of my readers who are considering making the jump from employee to owner.  Tony has experience in corporate fitness, big-ish gym creation and design (CSP), and studio-based fitness instruction.  He’s seen and done a lot.  Take notes, people.

PD: Coming from a facility of the size and scope of CSP, what are the environmental and/or cultural factors you spend the most time working to recreate in your new space?

TG: There’s been a great degree of “expectation management” on my end on this front.

I guess the appropriate response here is to state that it’s pretty much impossible to recreate CSP’s culture and environment. And, frankly, it’s never been my intention to attempt to do so.

Don’t get me wrong: much of who I am as a coach – my general approach and philosophy – has its core deeply embedded in CSP’s roots.  That, I think, will never go away.

However, when I decided to branch off on my own, my goal wasn’t to try to recreate CSP.  I’m still very much interested in getting people strong, helping them move better, possibly win a fight against a grizzly, and doing whatever I can to help people become the best versions of themselves possible…but the culture and “vibe” is still being developed (for lack of a better term).

People are deadlifting their faces off, I drop f-bombs incessantly, and there’s no shortage of techno blaring between the walls; my personality is nudging the culture in many ways. But it’s important for me to keep things in check and not marry myself to the idea that I need to “recreate” anything, or that it’s about ME in the first place.

Because it’s not.

Mark Fisher discusses the concept of culture all the time. It’s kind of his bag. There are ZERO gyms in the world that do what Mark Fisher Fitness does.  Unicorns, dildos, spontaneous dance parties, and naked glitter paint whateverthef*** are par for the course there.

The thing is: he didn’t seek out those things when he and his partners opened up their gym, and truthfully, I think he’d be the first one to say he has no idea how MFF became synonymous with Unicorns in the first place. It just sorta happened.

That said, Mark has always said that the culture at MFF – via a combination of himself, his business partners (Michael and Brian), as well as the STAFF, and the CLIENTS – is what resulted in dildos and Unicorns.

It’s about the PEOPLE; everyone. Not any one person.

In short: Matt Damon should totally train with me for the next Bourne movie.

PD: You waited nearly a decade to begin truly branding “Tony Gentilcore.”  What are the pros and cons of waiting as long as you did, and would you approach it differently if you could go back in time?

TG:

Pros: I didn’t propose to my wife until four years into our relationship. We got married at year five.

You can only imagine how many times we were asked, five months in, “soooo, are you two gonna get married?” from our parents, friends, and acquaintances.

We allowed ample time for our relationship to marinate, develop, and to figure stuff out. I mean, shit got real when we moved in together and adopted a cat. But we had a lot of tough discussions about finances, family stuff, and why I suck at washing dishes before we decided to get married. We had to duke things out to a degree.

When we were ready, we were ready. We were all in. And I feel our relationship is all the better for it.

In the same vein, with regards to my career, I waited until I was truly, 100% ready before I decided to take a big leap and venture off on my own.

Mind you, I started writing/blogging/website shenanigans back in 2006.  I’ve written over 1700 blog posts, hundreds of articles for various websites and magazines, and only now, 15 years into my career, that I feel I’m kinda-sorta ready to maybe write an ebook or produce a fitness product.

I just had my first t-shirt made and there are some trainers who haven’t been in the industry more than six months who are releasing books.

I’ve spent 10 years “building a brand within a brand,” which has helped tremendously and helped to soften the thud of the “WTF did I just do” moment in the initial days of leaving CSP.

We opened CSP in 2007. Business is not my strong suit. I still have a hard time differentiating between the terms net and gross income. But I had eight years watching and listening to you and Eric talk business…I absorbed a lot.

That’s a pretty baller “pro” if you ask me.

Cons: I don’t really have any, other than having to listen to Eric play “Linkin Park” radio on Pandora for so many years. My ears can’t stop bleeding.

PD: What’s been your biggest and most unexpected challenge since leaving CSP to be a one-man show?

TG: I miss being around the staff. Part of what made CSP so valuable was the immense amount of learning I was immersed in.  The opportunity to talk shop and bounce ideas off the other coaches is what helped keep me sharp.  Sure, I know a thing or two about a thing or two, but having the day-to-day contact with the coaches and staff at CSP is priceless and something I really miss.

I don’t miss Tank….;o)

PD: What’s the most under appreciated aspect of working with athletes primarily in a one-on-one format at a time when everyone seems to be preaching the importance of semi-private training?

TG: Technically I don’t train any of my clients in Boston one-on-one, and very much still follow the semi-private format I grew accustomed to at CSP.

I assess everyone in a one-on-one format, write full programming, and typically train anywhere from 2-5 people at a time in my studio.

That said, there have been more opportunities for me to work with people in a one-on-one setting, and it’s been sorta refreshing going back to my roots.

You forget about the importance of building interpersonal relationships with people and how cool and interesting everyone is. You tend to miss out on that component when only using the semi-private format.

PD: If I told you I’d pay for you to enroll in a single business school course to help improve your business acumen, what would it be and why?

TG: Is there a course on how to build Excel spreadsheets?  If so, I'd take that.

"Because My Boss Sucks" is a Shitty Reason to Open Your Own Gym

Aggressive blog title?  Maybe a little bit.  But 100% something you'd hear me say if you spent a day hanging around CSP.  As it turns out, there are plenty of irrational justifications for opening your own space.

• “I’m sick of giving this commercial gym so much of my hard-earned money.”
• “I want complete control of my schedule.”
• “I need more autonomy on the training floor.”
• “I’m tired of people telling me what gym clothes I need to wear to work.”
• “I want to spend less time working “floor hours” and more focusing on what I do best, coaching.”

All qualify as motivations to open your own gym…just not good ones.

Just a few quick questions...

If you think that opening your own shop is the solution that will allow you to suddenly free up the time and resources necessary for you to embrace the great aspects of coaching that got you into this industry in the first place, I have a few questions for you:

Where are you going to find the time to learn about lease negotiation?  That 10-year lease with rapidly and unexpectedly increasing CAM charges seems a little dicey.

How comfortable are you reviewing a proposed business insurance policy?  Did you catch that terrorism coverage they tried to sneak in there despite the fact that you’re gym is going to be located in Nebraska? 

Looking forward to learning the ins and outs of payroll taxes?  How about educating your self on the difference between employees who should be 1099’d and those who should be issued a W-2?

Are you ready to paint the walls, pay to keep the lights on, and assemble all of the equipment?  Now that I think of it, are you ready to pay for all of the equipment?  Did you realize that every time you break an exercise band or see a client mistakenly drop a 45-lb plate on a muscle clamp that comes out of somebody’s paycheck?  Lucky you.  That’s your paycheck now.

Did you set aside a few hundred dollars to pay for your employees to renew their CPR certification?  I’m pretty sure they’re not looking to pay for it if YOU decided certification was mandatory.

Did you realize that if your gym performs reasonably well, and you choose to accept credit cards for payment, you will end up giving thousands of dollars to Visa, American Express, and any other credit providers you choose to accept?  Speaking of which, did you realize you’re going to need to open another bank account for that?

Remember the last time you walked in to your commercial gym locker room and had to work through three different bathroom stalls before you could find one without urine on the seat or toilet paper plugging up the bowl?  Well when you start “living the dream” and open your own gym you don’t get to walk past those first two stalls anymore.  Time to bust out the rubber gloves, my friend.

How much thought have you put in to the language of your company sexual harassment policy?

Is there already money set aside to have a decent website designed?  How about the $250 fee you’ll need to pay if you want to trademark your gym name and logo?  Trust me when I tell you this…you’re going to want to do that.

Should I keep going?

I could go all day long with these questions.  My point isn’t to tell the world that running a gym is an awful experience.  Instead, I’m hoping to help you make an informed decision before chasing a dream.  Opening a fitness facility because you’re a personal trainer who doesn’t want to answer to anyone but his (or her) self is kind of like buying a house without the benefit of a proper inspection or down payment set aside.  Sure, it looks great from the curb, but there are a whole bunch of headaches awaiting you under that roof – and they ain’t going to fix themselves for free.

I often tell CSP interns that I aspire to operate a business that runs so smoothly and efficiently that they can’t help but want to open their own gym at the end of their time with us…but I also want to talk nearly all of them out of doing so.  Roughly 80% of all small businesses fail inside of their first three years of operation.  Most of the gyms that find themselves on this list are there because their decision to open was an emotional one, as opposed to an informed one. Do your due diligence first. Then you can decide if opening a gym is a gamble you want to take.

Standardizing Your Training Model Increases Coaching Effectiveness

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

– Herbert Simon

When I read this quote I imagine the Nobel Laureate referring to the poverty of attention that the coaches you employ experience when asked to wear ten different hats because of the extensive list of services you offer.

You name it...we've got it!

We can help any kind of client! We’ve got one-on-one personal training. We’ve got semi-private group training. We’ve got large group training. We’ve got spin classes. We’ve got yoga. We’ve got hot yoga!  We’ve got women-only training. We’ve got self-defense classes.  There's no end in sight to what we can do for you.

Photo: www.marketingtechnologyinc.com

There are plenty of problems that come with operating a business featuring a dozen different service offerings, but the biggest of these issues is the lack of depth that results. Being seen as a mile wide and an inch deep is anything but convincing if your goal is to be perceived as “the best” fitness instruction provider in your market.

Ask less of your team...get more

Figure out a way to standardize your training model and then focus on being exceptional at delivering an amazing experience within the confines of that single coaching format. 

Roughly 99% of the athletes that walk through the doors of CSP pay for semi-private group training.  Our coaches are continually refining their ability to instruct athletes in a predictable format instead of worrying about bouncing from one supervision model to the next. There’s never confusion as it relates to expectations for coaching responsibilities or client needs.

Stop asking each of your team members to be a jack-of-all-trades. Instead, provide them with the tools they need to be a master-of-one.

Are You Sabotaging Your Ability to Convert Leads?

You insist that you can close anybody if given the chance to demonstrate your coaching skill set, but your selling strategy doesn’t reflect your attitude.

What do I mean by this? 

I mean that despite needing just a single in-person training session to establish yourself as a worthy investment, you can’t seem to stop discussing 3, 6, or even 12-month package rates before even locking in the initial visit.

I too believe that I can close any lead that happens to set foot inside of our facility.  With a couple dozen framed MLB jerseys hanging on the walls, and a training environment that features high energy and meticulous coaching, the training space effectively sells itself.  The problem is that walk-ins are rare, and I need to close the majority of our leads over the phone.

photo credit - www.carsalesprofessional.com

Guess what I don’t do…I don’t allow the conversation to revolve around the fact that it costs more than $700/month to train with us 4-days per week.  Our monthly training fees are dictated by anticipated weekly training frequency, but that really doesn’t matter before we’ve booked an assessment.  What matters is that the first step in the process of training with us is to schedule an initial evaluation, and that will be a very manageable $99 investment.

Let's not put the cart before the horse...

I’ll worry about selling you on the initial assessment.  Our facility, our training environment, and our team will take care of “convincing” you to take the steps beyond that.

Your Adjacent Possible - An Opportunity to Innovate

In last week’s post I made an argument for the importance of finding a niche within the fitness industry.  I explained how and why I would go about securing a specific area of expertise if presented with the challenge of starting fresh.  What I didn’t do, however, was explain how we stumbled upon the opportunity to capture market share within the baseball-specific strength and conditioning segment back in 2007.

I often catch people off guard when explaining that Eric Cressey became “the baseball guy” within the fitness industry without having played the sport competitively beyond little league.  How did Eric, and Cressey Sports Performance as a whole, manage to capture so much market share within this niche without having “walked-the-walk” on baseball fields at a high school, collegiate or professional level?

This summer we will celebrate the 9th anniversary of business operation here at Cressey Sports Performance.  It was on July 13th of 2007 that Eric, Tony and I set out on a mission to create a self-employment scenario which would allow for us to show up to “work” every day in gym clothes and listen to loud music.  Long before becoming “the baseball guys” within the fitness industry, we were the guys trying to identify anyone willing to give us their money in exchange for our services.

No one ever specifically told us to identify a niche and capture it.  We discovered the opportunity within the baseball community for a couple of simple reasons.  For starters, our first gym was a 2,200 square foot unit carved out of the back corner of a pitching and hitting instruction facility.  You couldn’t enter our space without walking past five hitting and pitching “cages”. 

The second reason we attracted baseball players was Eric’s unique working knowledge of the shoulder.  His time spent both instructing and playing tennis as a teenager had resulted in shoulder damage that arguably warranted surgical repair.  In the years following this diagnosis, he spent extensive time trying to identify a training approach that would allow for him to avoid going under the knife.  While not his initial intention, he accumulated a wealth of knowledge that could be immediately applied to training the baseball community.  As it turns out, throwing a baseball is surprisingly similar to the mechanics of serving a tennis ball.

This tennis-to-baseball transition is a nice illustration of how we embraced the concept of the “Adjacent Possible” in order to capture our unique niche here at Cressey Sports Performance.

A theoretical biologist named Stuart Kofman coined the term Adjacent Possible.  It is applicable to every industry or field in need of constant innovation.  Steven Johnson described it best in a piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal in 2010: 

As we opened our doors for business eight years ago, our team included a shoulder rehabilitation specialist (Eric Cressey) and an accomplished strength coach with division-1 baseball playing experience (Tony Gentilcore).  As a result, the baseball-specific strength and conditioning niche sat well within our “shadow future” if we were to be effective in reinventing our present.

Eric realized that baseball players were an underserved population when it came to off-field training, so he took his unique shoulder assessment and programming knowledge and applied it to the adjacent community of overhead-throwing athletes.  Since that time, CSP has managed to innovate by delivering baseball-specific individualized training materials to athletes hailing from all 30 MLB organizations.

By employing a collection of strength coaches who are masters of their craft, we are able to maintain control of our niche.  Their working knowledge of the needs of the baseball community is unparalleled, and allows for us to remain at the cutting edge of our segment.  Resting on our laurels would render our first-mover advantage within this niche moot.  There is always someone willing to outwork you if you slip up.

Creating a profitable niche within the fitness industry is about more than simply identifying an underserved population and claiming a first mover advantage.  Every type of athlete has a unique set of problems.  In order to solve unique problems, you need to acquire unique skills.  You could read every single word of shoulder-related material Eric has published and cover every study he’s ever consumed during his own self-study, and still be more than 1,000 in-person shoulder assessments away from the volume of hands-on experience he has accumulated during his career.      

Before you can create true innovation by tapping in to your Adjacent Possible, you need to accrue the career capital that will allow you to differentiate yourself with a rare and valuable skill set.  Master your craft by focusing on deliberate practice.  Consume as much continuing education material as much as you can.  Work with athletes from all walks of life.  Step outside of your coaching comfort zone. 

Achieving expert status with your specific craft puts you that much closer to the opportunity to capture a unique niche.  If you’re lucky, that niche may lie within your adjacent possible.

Identifying An Untouched Fitness Niche

“The leader doesn't always win when they're playing the other guy's game.” – Gary Vaynerchuck

You may not realize it upon first glance, but this sentence perfectly encapsulates the argument for becoming as niched as possible in the fitness industry.  Our field is full of leaders, and many of them achieved that status by being exceptional at serving one or two specific athletic populations.   

These leaders have captured first-mover advantages within both their respective segments of the industry, and their geographic footprints.  As time passes, it becomes increasingly difficult for aspiring competitors to successfully play the leader’s game, on the leader’s turf. 

What do I mean by this? 

I mean that it’s bad business to set up a baseball-specific training facility within an hour drive of either of our Cressey Sports Performance locations.   

It’s a terrible idea to open a gym in southern Florida targeting football combine-prep athletes and expect to avoid being trounced by the guys at Bommarito Performance Systems.  (they prepared roughly 10% of ALL guys invited to the 2015 NFL Combine according to Forbes)

It’s an especially bad idea to open a spot in midtown Manhattan featuring transformation challenges knowing that you’re just blocks away from the guys at Mark Fisher Fitness, who basically wrote the book on this service model with their Snatched in 6-Weeks program. 

Getting the idea? 

Peter Thiel put it best in his book Zero to One when he said: “Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace; they will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique.”

Time to stop playing the other guy’s game 

You can peacefully coexist with the leading gym in your respective market, just as long as you’re not trying to beat them at their own game.  Next week someone could open a world-class training facility catering to dancers directly across the hall from CSP and do just fine.  The key to their success would be originality and catering to an underserved target market.    

I recently had the pleasure of joining Greg Bradley to record an episode of the Fitness Business Experience Podcast.  We covered a ton of ground in an hour, and one topic we spoke of in great detail was the idea of niche development.  Greg asked me to explain how I would go about identifying and capturing a new niche.  How would I go from zero to one if I wanted to secure my own unique part of the fitness industry? 

I told him that I’d take it a step further than simply picking a sport.  I’d go as far as targeting those playing a specific position.  Based on my own athletic background and areas of interest, I’d attempt to become “the guy” for strength training for soccer goalkeepers. 

Why so specific?  

If you want to avoid playing the leader’s game, you’d better be prepared to create a new one. 

A quick Google query told me that no one is currently publishing content relating to goalkeeper-specific strength and conditioning.  There are coaches offering positional instruction and camps that feature a strength training component, but nobody has claimed the role of articulating the unique training needs of this population in the same way that Eric Cressey did with baseball players (and pitchers in particular) beginning close to a decade ago. 

One of our current interns at CSP Massachusetts listened to this edition of the FBE podcast last week and made sure to drop by my office the next morning to see if I’d elaborate on my goalkeeper niche comment.

“Do you feel like that’s a large enough segment to target?”

I would be lying if I told you that I had investigated the answer to this question prior making the statement.  At the time of the recording, I was trying to make the point that you need to drill down beyond the sport level if you want to find an untouched population.  Scalability is the other side to the coin. If the numbers support the concept, an opportunity exists.

In 2014 (most recent figure I could find) the U.S. Youth Soccer Federation reported a registration figure of 3,055,148 soccer players.  If we are to assume that one out of every eleven soccer players is a goalkeeper, this leaves us with roughly 277,000 net-minders playing the game in just this country.   

Let me repeat: just this country. 

We’re talking about the most popular sport in the world, and the internet essentially allows any of us to speak to a global population.  This is an opportunity to become the thought leader with a very specific (and viable) population who's success is contingent upon athleticism.  Why hasn’t anyone tried to grab this segment yet?  Why hasn’t anyone taken a stab at being “THE GUY who knows how to design strength training materials specifically for soccer goalkeepers?” 

Being “The Guy” at anything leads to immense benefits 

At least once each week I field an inquiry to CSP that begins with: “I know you guys train primarily baseball players but…”

The “but” in this scenario can go in all kinds of different directions.  But my daughter is a field hockey player who needs to get stronger for tryouts.  But my son had an ACL reconstruction last year and needs to get back in to the weight room.  But I am interested in powerlifting and thought maybe you guys would be able to help me with my deadlift technique. 

What these callers are really saying is “I understand you are the go-to guys for training baseball players, so I figured that anyone who is the best at training one population is probably far better than average at working with most others.” 

Someday soon a fitness professional will earn a reputation as the go-to resource for goalkeeper-specific program design and content.  Achieving this status will inevitably lead to additional inquiries from field players, people from other athletic populations, and general fitness candidates.  If you focus on being so good in one category that a substitute doesn’t exist, you’ll soon find that your niched reputation is anything but limiting.

Become a Better Business Owner by Experiencing an Employee's Role

Once a week, on Saturday mornings, I “return to my roots” and assume the responsibilities that come with managing the front end of our business.  Clients check in, make payments, schedule future training sessions, and more.  It is the definition of a customer service job, and for the first 5 years we were in business, it was my primary role.

There was a time when I knew the name of every person who came through the door, parents included.  Now that my energy is typically directed toward business development endeavors, I seem to have lost my magic touch at the front desk.  Many faces are unfamiliar to me and I’ve lost the intuition necessary to seamlessly anticipate client needs and questions.  I’m just not as good as I used to be. 

The good news is that this isn’t a problem.  I hired Stacie to be good at running the front desk, and she is.  She’s damn good at it. 

My first 5 years “out front” were spent creating and defining the role that would ultimately become the CSP Office Manager.  I now take different value away from the experience each time I sit down and start greeting clients.  Here’s a look at three ways that running the front desk at CSP just a single day each week makes me a better business owner and manager of people:

1. I manage better when empathetic to the current demands of the role

The role of Office Manager here at CSP is probably the most underappreciated and misunderstood.  It is easy to stand on the customer side of that desk and assume that the key to success is simply incessant smiling and maintaining an upbeat attitude, but you really have no idea how challenging that is until you’ve had the pleasure of enduring a 5-7 hour shift in this position. 

There are impatient parents.  There are young athletes who continuously disregard our requests for advanced scheduling.  There are those who “forgot” to let us know they needed new programming until the moment they’re due.  There are the athletes who repeatedly ask you to reprint their programs because they forgot or lost their copy.   There’s the insufferable caller who refuses to leave a voicemail and would rather hang up and redial 15 times in a 3-minute span until you answer. 

These are all issues that you could encounter during the first ten minutes of a typical front desk shift.

It is important that I periodically expose myself to this collection of unavoidable headaches so that I have an appreciation for the daily hurdles Stacie needs to get over as she does her job.  Greg Robins once told me that the definition of true leadership is being willing and able to do what you ask of others, and I think this applies to my weekly participation at the front desk. 

2. Better understanding of my staff’s soft-skills

I have 100% confidence in each of my coach’s capacity to deliver quality training advice and instruction while on the gym floor, but their ability to sell varies dramatically from one staff member to the next.  Some of my coaches find themselves at ease while explaining to an athlete that two weekly training sessions at CSP would be far more appropriate than one, while others are terrified to ask for the additional investment from a client. 

Every time I operate at the front desk I have the chance to observe these staff members in action as they engage with parents in the office.  There’s more to excelling as a coach at CSP than being the best at program design.  Those who demonstrate a capacity to articulate our training model and pricing structure prove to be especially versatile as we continue to grow our business. 

Some staff members could stand to be better at closing a sale, while others need to improve their ability to articulate assessment findings and training objectives in layman’s terms.  In any case, I am only able to assist in personal or professional development of my team if I am aware of room for improvement.  My time at the front desk affords me the chance to identify these opportunities. 

3. Engagement with customers allows me to better understand client perspective

My understanding of “the state of the CSP family” is typically guided by what Stacie chooses to tell me at any given moment.  She’s got her finger on the pulse of our business and routinely brings me in the loop as it relates to client gossip, trends she’s seeing among our clientele, and any other noteworthy happenings in and around our gym. 

The only better way for me to go about acquiring this information is to go directly to the source by chatting with clients and their parents every Saturday.  Our clients are dying to give us feedback…we just need to remember to ask for it.  Could we be open at more convenient hours?  Have any of my employees provided a distinctly memorable service experience?  Are we doing a good job of explaining our service model before, during or after an initial evaluation?

I can’t make modifications to our systems and services if I’m unaware of our client’s wishes, and the most effective way for me to identify these wishes is with face-to-face conversation.   

Entrepreneurs should never stop wearing many hats

The key to maintaining my entrepreneurial spirit is remembering that this business we’ve created actually found its identity while I was sitting at the front desk.  My understanding of our niche, the psyche of our clients, and the personality of my team is almost entirely founded in my time spent greeting clients upon arrival, and sending them on their way at the conclusion of their training sessions. 

I am not now, and never will be, above the customer service role of running our front desk.  Wile the bulk of my time is best spent creating and executing a growth and development plan for CSP, I should never stop making time for the occasional shift "out front" in order to stay in tune with the needs of our business.

4 Things We Did Before Worrying About Brand Development

Guess who thought it would be a good idea to book a 20-hour trip to present at a seminar 1,500+ miles away on the same day that we lose an hour overnight to daylight savings?  This guy.

Despite my current sleep-deprived status, the first annual Cressey Sports Performance - FL Spring Seminar was a great success.  I’d like to extend a huge thank you to the Cresseys for (briefly) hosting me, and to all of the fitness professionals who set aside an entire Sunday in sunny Florida to focus on their own professional development.

I made my way south to deliver a presentation entitled “Business Before Branding,” which highlighted some of the most important lessons we learned nearly a decade ago while getting CSP up off the ground and running.  I was initially inspired to prepare this material following a conversation with a young strength coach at the The Fitness Summit this past spring.

Just moments after concluding my presentation, this gentleman approached me for feedback on his logo.  My first impression was that he’d created a really nice design, though my tune quickly changed when he informed me that he didn’t have a gym, clients, or a business model; he just knew that he wanted to own a facility some day. 

My message to him was fairly simple: any time, energy, or resources you have right now should be directed toward creating something tangible.  Logo modifications can wait until there is a business behind the artwork.  I wish I had delivered the feedback Gary Vaynerchuck shared following a similar question in his book, #AskGaryVee:

“STOP it. You cannot properly market something if you don’t even know whether it’s any good. You’ve got to develop it, feel it, taste it, put it out in the wild, and reverse-engineer it so you know it’s serviceable and valuable to consumers.”

That should have been my response.

Some CSP statistics that may surprise you

Believe it or not, we were open for business for 293 days before our Cressey Sports Performance website went live.  In fact, we strung together more than 1,200 days of operation before realizing we needed to get CSP up on Twitter. 

Can a new strength & conditioning facility expect to survive (and grow rapidly) for ten months without anything other than a Gmail account?  Yes!  As a matter of fact, it is possible.

Over a ten-month span, we managed to execute initial assessments with 239 new clients, coach 5,300+ individualized strength training sessions, and build brand awareness purely through word of mouth.  Most importantly, we did it all with a small team that featured “a business guy” and a pair of strength coaches. 

By the time our website went live, we’d outgrown our first space and opened a 6,600 square foot facility we were proud to showcase.  We’d also created the systems necessary to really begin scaling our business.  We were ready to start worrying about branding.

Here’s a look at four things that took priority over branding during our first 293 days of operation:

1. Solidifying Our Training Model

From the very beginning, Eric had a firm rule: under no circumstance would our business model dictate our training model.  By this, he meant that we weren’t going to pack the gym with as many athletes as possible if it meant that we were going to be delivering generic training materials.  In our eyes, semi-private group training was the optimal service model, and we continue to implement this today. 

Our ultimate success has always been driven by client results, and the key to this component of our model is individualized program design based on the findings of a thorough initial assessment.

We spent close to ten months getting the kinks out of our systems.  We worked to identify the perfect client-to-coach ratio, appropriate training session durations, and other components of actually delivering a memorable training experience.

2. Standardizing Assessment & Programming Strategy

No amount of “talking shop” is going to prepare multiple coaches to design training materials that share the same look, feel, and intent.  While Eric and Tony possessed the same basic philosophy of strength and conditioning, they still needed to spend the better part of the first year of CSP getting on the same page as it relates to assessment strategy, program design, and exercise terminology.

We knew we wanted to build our business aggressively, and the key to being able to do so was in locking down a standardized training methodology before adding additional coaches to the team.  Employing a 5:1 client-to-coach ratio is borderline impossible when multiple staff members are responsible for program design and every one of them has a different way of labeling a lunge variation.

3. Syncing of Coaching Styles

Much like exercise terminology leaves plenty of room for interpretation, coaching instruction can be delivered in a wide variety of ways.  You can get away with six different ways of cueing proper technique for a trap bar deadlift if your gym staffs a collection of independent contractors who “own” their clients and coach in an entirely one-on-one format.  You can’t, however, do so if you count on multiple coaches to deliver the same message and training experience to 100% of the athletes who come through the door.

Our semi-private group training model now allows for clients to engage with up to 10 or 12 coaches during a given training session at CSP, so delivery of effective coaching instruction is contingent upon standardization of cues.  I encourage every staff member to let their freak flag fly high during conversation between sets, but the message needs to be consistent when it comes time to supervise a coaching-intensive movement.  Eric and Tony spent much of those first 293 days deciding on exactly what that message would be and we can continue to scale the model today because of their efforts.

4. Creation & Standardization of the Selling Process

Whenever possible, I give the pitch for CSP training services.  Leads are directed to my attention and it is up to me to turn them into paying customers.  My job is to bring people through the door with cash in hand and an interest in our training model.  I leave it up to my coaches to deliver an experience that will result in us enjoying the lifetime value of a dedicated client.

In order to put my staff in the best position to create the type of experience I’ve mentioned, it is important to standardize client expectations from day one.  This starts with my articulation of the training model during the selling process.  If I fail to clearly explain the collaborative coaching strategy we employ, the nature of our training environment, or even appropriate training attire, we run the risk of clients feeling misled or confused by the experience.  The best way to avoid all of these issues is to ensure that whomever is selling your service has perfected your pitch, and more importantly, the value proposition behind it.

With zero fitness industry experience as of the day we opened CSP, I felt less than prepared to fly solo during the initial selling process.  Eric allowed me to shadow him while explaining the services and training model for about two days before throwing me in to the fire.  “You’ve got an MBA…you’ll figure it out” was essentially the extent of his motivational selling instruction from there.

Instead of spending my time and energy worrying about creating a catchy hash tag or viral marketing effort, I was more worried about making sure I knew how to sell what we would eventually be promoting the crap out of.  It probably took about 293 days to polish up my approach, but I figured it out. 

Before worrying about the nuances of each social networking platform…

Make sure you’ve established the systems and services that you’re going to be publicizing before really diving in to your branding efforts.  The beautiful thing (and arguably worst thing) about the fitness industry and gym ownership in general is the low barrier to entry.  If you can afford a power rack and some weights, you can proclaim yourself a gym owner.  With this in mind, there is no need to chase investors during your early stages, and therefore no need to lose sleep over brand management right off the bat.

Feel free to shoot me an email if you’d like to discuss the growth and development of your own fitness business. I’d love to help!

Sidestepping the Paradox of Success

Raise your hand if you’ve heard (or read) me preaching the importance of finding a unique fitness niche in order to improve your chances of running of profitable gym.  If you’ve read more than one of my posts, you’ve likely got a hand in the air.

This time around I’d like to hit you with a little curve ball.  I want to discuss the potential pitfall that comes with successfully capturing a specific segment of our industry and becoming “the go-to guy (or girl)” in that area. 

I’ve just finished reading Essentialism by Greg McKeown, a book that was recommended to me roughly two dozen times before I finally pulled the trigger on picking up a copy of my own.  In it, McKeown discusses what he refers to as “the paradox of success.”  The paradox of success is what most people would call a good problem to have.  What most new fitness entrepreneurs fail to realize is that a good problem to have is still a problem.

According to McKeown, there are four distinct phases of the paradox of success. Here’s a look at each phase, and a description of how we handled the development of CSP during each step in the process.

Phase 1: Clarity of purpose leads to positive outcomes

The turning point in the story of CSP came back in the fall of 2007 when we chose to embrace our unexpected local reputation as “the baseball guys”.  Instead of running from this unofficial title in an attempt to position us as everything to everyone, we selected an untapped niche and began laying out a game plan for capturing it.

We put every high school ballplayer we worked with into a free CSP tee shirt on the day of the initial assessment.  We attended more spring and summer baseball games than I can count.  We networked our way on to the radar of the most influential personalities in the Massachusetts baseball community.  We began to make connections with local college coaches, MLB affiliated scouts, and anyone else with an opinion on the best way to develop a young baseball player. 

We hustled six to seven days per week for about a year and a half before deciding to take the liberties of actual days off.  We earned first mover advantage in the baseball-specific strength and conditioning niche. 

We had clarity of purpose.

Phase 2: The “go to” guys for baseball see increased options & opportunities

Increased opportunities initially translated to more foot traffic in our gym and a full assessment schedule.  The options began to roll in and people started floating ideas of opportunities that would pull us outside of the walls of CSP.

Come on out and warm up our team on game days!  Give an arm-care demonstration at our parent’s open house night!  Open a satellite facility in this building I own just a couple of towns over!  Partner with us to open a world-class baseball complex in Florida!  You should license the CSP training model!  Sell me a franchise!

Options.  So many options.

Phase 3: More options = More demands on time = Diffused efforts

I recently recorded an edition of The Fitness Business Experience Podcast where I mentioned that we’ve made more than our fair share of mistakes in nearly a decade of operation.  One of those tactical mistakes was jumping at the first satellite facility opportunity that presented itself, resulting in us spreading ourselves thin on resources.  We sent our first employee, Brian St. Pierre, to a hitting and pitching instruction facility just 20-minutes down the road to coach high school athletes two afternoons/evenings a week. 

This “project” lasted roughly 18-months before we opted to transition away from the opportunity and place our focus entirely on developing CSP’s business under just one roof.  McKeown would say that pursuing a satellite facility while our business was in its infancy was less of an opportunity, and more of a demand upon our time and energies that would lead to a diffusion of efforts.  He would be right.

Phase 4: Distractions undermine the clarity that led to initial success

Our brief foray into managing a satellite facility taught us the important lesson that without having rock solid systems in place, scaling your model quickly will only serve to exhaust your employees and convolute public perception of your brand.  We’d earned the chance to open this second spot because of the positive word of mouth that resulted from athletes experiencing our unique gym culture and training experience.  In hindsight, pursuing a growth opportunity simply because we could wasn’t a great excuse to do so.

As soon as we began spreading our existing resources over two locations, we began struggling to continuously deliver the quality service that had put us on the map in the first place.  Instead of hiring quickly and throwing more resources at what was trending closer and closer to sunk cost status, we chose to pull the plug.  In effect, we got out early enough to sidestep the full implications of the paradox of success.

How your gym can sidestep the paradox…

The most important thing you can do right now is to post your company’s mission statement and core values in plain sight and make sure to read them every day.  I’d imagine they are more focused on helping individuals than they are on scaling a brand.  Make sure your employees see them.  Make them visible to your clients.  When it comes to your company values, don’t just talk about them.  Be about them.

Unless your objective is to spread brand awareness all over the fitness world as quickly as possible, you should possess a singular focus on creating a training experience that the industry and community cant help but talk about.  It took us nearly eight years to open our second CSP location in Florida, yet I’d imagine that most of my readers were aware of our brand before that point.  We got on your radar by seeking “so good they can’t ignore you” status.

The key is to avoid jumping at what Jim Collins referred to as "the undisciplined pursuit of more" in his book How the Mighty Fall.  You should have no problem doing so if your actions reflect the words in your mission statement.  As I said before, success-related growing pains are a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless.

Pump the Brakes on Bashing Higher Education for Fitness Professionals

With increasing frequency, I find myself answering the question of whether or not academic degrees are “worth it” to achieve success in the fitness industry.  Until recently, this question was usually specific to fitness-related degrees.  Now that I am finding more and more opportunities to share my insights with fitness professionals and gym owners, people also want to know whether or not my undergraduate business degree and MBA were necessary. 

Great questions.

(For those of you interested in Eric’s answer to the fitness-related degree question, you can find an extremely thorough explanation here and here.  In short, his answer boils down to “it depends”.)

Photo credit snaap.indiana.edu

In his book titled Conscious Capitalism, John Mackey said that his success in creating Whole Foods Market was partially attributed to his decision not to attend business school because it left him with “nothing to unlearn.”  It seems to me that an increasing number of fitness professionals are beginning to embrace a similar attitude to Mackey’s.  Is higher education for fitness professionals and gym owners getting a bad rap?

When it comes to building and operating a business such as Cressey Sports Performance, application of common sense is more important than any specific individual skills obtained during college or graduate school.  My prior exposure to accounting principles and marketing strategy helps, but there’s no substitution for the simple policy of: don’t spend more dollars than you collect. 

Boom!  Business 101 in just six words.

This being said, both my undergraduate business degree and my MBA were absolutely worth it…just not necessarily for the reasons you’d think.

Here are three very important lessons you’ll learn in college (and graduate school) that are immensely valuable for anyone looking to jump in to the fitness industry.

1. Nobody cares if you fail

In the beginning, I was not a good student.  In fact, I’d describe myself as a bad student up until right around the start of my second semester of college.  I coasted along with a mediocre work ethic, had the tendency to fall back on the excuse that I was dyslexic, and assumed that a good SAT score was all it would take for me to attend the college of my choice.  I was an idiot.

When you’re living under your parents’ roof and attending middle school or high school, there are all kinds of safety nets keeping you from complete and utter failure.  When I had a couple of less than stellar weeks of academics to start a term, a progress report was sent home requiring a parent signature.  Parent/Teacher Conferences were also the norm.  Someone always seemed to be paying attention to my productivity. 

My first semester at Babson College was the kick in the pants that I needed to begin understanding how the world actually works.  (A d-minus in calculus will do that for you.)  I learned more important lessons during the fall of 1999 than I had in the 18 years leading up to it.  The most important takeaway was that nobody cares if you succeed once you’re done with your formative years. 

When you get to college, no one is concerned with whether or not you showed up to class on a given day or remembered to do your homework.  No one holds you accountable if you don’t carry a passing average past a mid-term exam.  You pay for the opportunity to pursue a degree, but the school has little incentive to worry about your performance once your money is sitting in their bank account.

Once you decide it is time to dive into the real world and become a strength coach, personal trainer, or whatever type of fitness professional title you’d like to apply to your resume, you’ll realize that no one actually cares what level of success you achieve.  I’m thankful to have learned this lesson during college because it kept me from burning bridges professionally when “real life” kicked in.

2. Your ability to network will drive your earning potential

During the first five minutes of my very first college class, I listened to a professor make a statement that sticks with me to this day:

“You guys really want to succeed in the business world?  Learn to play golf.”

Photo Credit: www.back9network.com

While the suggestion was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the message was important: business is about managing relationships and being an effective conversationalist.  Striking a golf ball with accuracy is of little importance, but having the ability to comfortably “talk shop” between strokes on the course is a skill that translates to success in multiple facets in life.

I was reminded on a daily basis during my college years that my classmates would become the foundation of my professional network at a time when LinkedIn, Facebook, and any other type of social networking platform did not yet exist.  We were constantly asked to complete group assignments that required us to master the art of shared responsibility and a collaborative task-driven work dynamic that you are unlikely to experience at any point in high school.

My higher education experience forced me to learn to “play well with others” in a professional setting.  I am a better colleague, manager of people, and contributor to the fitness industry today because of these networking skills acquired while attending college and graduate school.

3. Growth and development lie outside of your immediate comfort zone

By bypassing the pursuit of higher education in favor of entering the fitness industry, you miss the opportunity to surround yourself with ambitious individuals with other areas of interest.  If you secure a coaching job in your hometown, socialize with nothing but other fitness professionals, and only concern yourself with getting better by attending fitness events, you’ll never have the chance to learn from people from outside of your field.

I am a firm believer in the concept that you are the product of the five people you spend the most time with.  As it turns out, my business partner is the only one of “my five” with any interest in, or connection to the world of fitness.  This allows me to source professional ideas and concepts from individuals with unique perspectives and business experience that isn’t grounded in time spent on a gym floor.

Of the people who have had the biggest influence on my professional development beyond my business partner, one is a guy I met as an undergraduate student who now makes his living as a venture capitalist, and another was my academic advisor during my MBA program.  Take into consideration the fact that Eric and I met as the result of our college selection, and you’ll see that three of the biggest influences on me professionally became a part of my life thanks to my pursuit of higher education.

It’s about more than accumulating book smarts

One of the most common statements I hear from participants of our CSP internship program goes a little something like this: “I’ve learned more in the past four months of coaching here at CSP than I did during four years of college.”

Though I can appreciate the compliment in this claim, I feel inclined to point out the fact that we will not even consider intern applicants under the age of 21 with less than two years of college under their belts.  Whether students realize it or not, their time spent in school helped them to develop the emotional maturity and soft skills necessary to handle one’s self on the training floor at CSP.

There is a ton of value in obtaining a degree that isn’t found within the pages of a textbook.  

3 Reasons We Don't Offer Free Consultations

*Disclaimer: I fully understand that many fitness professionals are bound by the obligation to provide free consults per the policies of their employers.  Who am I to get in the way of the service offerings and corporate policies of the likes of Equinox and other big-box gyms?  With this in mind, this post is geared toward those of you who have flexibility in your service model and pricing structure.  Enjoy!

I’ve “entered the unicorn”…

I had the opportunity to present at the Motivation & Movement Lab hosted by Mark Fisher Fitness this past weekend in New York City.  Harold Gibbons described the objective for the event as “Perform Better meets The Fitness Summit”. They NAILED IT.  My presentation was titled Innovative Selling Strategies for Fitness Professionals and it covered exactly how I go about converting Cressey Sports Performance leads into scheduled initial assessments.

The unique (and fantastic) thing about this event is the part-presentation, part-workshop format.  Presenters were tasked with preparing a 20-25 minute talk which would be followed by a 45-minute breakout session where we “workshop” our ideas.  Coming in to the experience, I expected to breeze through the presentation piece and struggle with the group discussion component.  In the end, my experience was the exact opposite.  Condensing a concept into a 25-minute presentation window is far more difficult than standing in front of a room and plowing through 50-60 minutes of content on a PowerPoint deck. 

For those of you who have an upcoming public speaking event on the books, I encourage you to pick up a copy of Talk Like TED.  I have made a habit of rereading this text prior to every speaking engagement I book.  Each time my presentation topic changes, I find that the material in the book resonates differently with me.  As Todd Bumgarder said to me at Saturday night’s social event, “the way we interpret the material we’re reading in any given moment is entirely about context.” 

A tour of MFF with Michael, the "Business guy"

One statement I made that sparked intrigue…

Nearly every time I deliver a presentation, one or two specific statements or concepts will lead to the bulk of the follow up questions.  This time around was no different.

I mentioned that in nearly nine years of running CSP, we’ve never formally offered a FREE initial evaluation.  If you want to walk through our doors, you’ll need to find $99 to get things started.  What followed was extensive elaboration on this policy during our breakout sessions, and even further discussion as I sat on the expert panel at the end of day one. 

How do you justify not offering a free first visit?  Are people turned off by an initial charge?  How many of them do you convert to business at the end of the assessment?

All reasonable questions.

Why we charge for the initial evaluation at CSP

I have a good friend (and former intern) who has extensive experience managing the personal training team in one of Massachusetts’ busiest commercial gyms.  He recently explained to me that only 30% of the members who were offered a free consultation with a personal trainer upon opening a membership actually took advantage of the opportunity.  This may be a solid conversation rate from the perspective of the commercial gym owner, but not for the independent contractor who doesn’t see a single penny of the monthly membership dues these potential leads are paying.  A 30% conversion rate tells me that 7 out of 10 people decided that something for nothing was actually worth nothing. 

Prior to opening CSP, I paid for (and underutilized) memberships at three different commercial gyms in a four year span.  I was offered the free consultation each and every time.  I declined, each and every time.

Albert Einstein is famous for saying that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”  With this quote in mind, and taking into consideration my own prior exposure to “free consult” offers, rolling out a CSP initial assessment protocol that featured a FREE component would have qualified as an insane move on my part.  Why not try a new approach?

These are the three ways I justify having an initial assessment charge:

1. I sell with conviction

Eric Cressey had multiple college degrees on the day we opened up CSP.  He’d brought the Magnificent Mobility DVD to market and was on the cusp of releasing Maximum Strength, a text that would soon sit on the bookshelves of Barnes & Nobles.  Why, then, would we expect people to come through the door assuming that he owes them something for free in order to prove himself?  Would you walk into a salon and expect your first haircut for free so that you could decide whether or not you were going to take the jump and invest some money in coloring or highlights? 

I understand that a free initial offer is a textbook lead generation tool, but it does not need to apply to the kind of experienced fitness professionals who take the time to attend seminars on the weekends and to read fitness-business-specific blogs such as this one.  Your time is valuable.  It isn’t mandatory that you decrease its perceived value by slapping a $0.00 price tag on it.

2. I’m not handing out samples

A free consultation is like the sample of General Gau’s that you grab as you race past Panda Express on your way to a glorious Sbarro calzone.  It’s a passing indulgence.  To me, the term “free” screams: Unlimited supply!  Generic!  Vanilla!

A $99 initial evaluation at CSP is the first step in the process of addressing your own unique training needs.  It’s an informational and enlightening 90-minute window where we’ll closely review your injury history and training experience.  We’ll see if we can identify any faulty movement patterns or flexibility limitations that might need to be addressed.  We’ll articulate the importance of a thorough warm-up before training.  We may introduce you to some corrective exercise.  You’ll learn how to properly hip-hinge. 

This is a comprehensive experience.  If you had to assign a fair market value to this service based on my description, would you say it was $0.00?  It’s time for me to rethink my approach if you did just that.

3. Extreme(ish) Investment

Mark Fisher gave a fantastic presentation at this past weekend’s event covering the transformation program that really put MFF on the map: Snatched in 6-Weeks.  He explained that one of the seven “hell yeahs” of the Snatched program was extreme buy-in.  At a price point somewhere in the $800 range, this program is anything but cheap.  By making an extreme investment in one’s health, a Snatched client feels inclined to see it through right down to the very last session.

We see this psychology hold-true on a smaller scale here at CSP when we charge a fee for our initial assessment.  Clients who spend $99 to get the wheels in motion feel an obligation to extract as much value as they possibly can from their initial investment.  This is accomplished by committing to a month of individualized programming design based on the findings of our evaluation. 

An investment on day one serves as an unofficial declaration of commitment to the process, while execution of a free consultation feels more like an experiment that you may or may not decide to pursue further.

Don’t Forget…

My last piece of advice is to embrace the role as a price leader.  Premium services should command premium price points.  If you believe yourself to be “the best coach in your area”, then your service costs should reflect your confidence in this service…right down to the initial visit.

If you are pitching someone who has taken the time to send you an inquiry email, call for an explanation of your services, or drop-in to see you in action, they’ve already demonstrated that they see value in your offerings. 

After all, they found you.

10 Problems That Come With Managing a Mature Fitness Business

It's all rainbows and butterflies at first. 

When you start from nothing, everything you do helps to set a record.  One tough realization we all eventually come to in the weight room is that once the "newbie gains" conclude, you can't achieve a personal best every time you step up to the bar.  Nonetheless, for a little while, we all believe we can.  

It’s hard not to run your business with the same mentality when you’re the new guy on the block and people seem to keep finding their way through your doors to see what your gym is all about.  Continuing double (or even triple) digit growth year after year? Sure, that's sustainable!

It probably isn’t.  And that's okay.  

We’ve all been told that starting a business is hard, but there doesn’t seem to be much discussion regarding the troubles that come with plugging forward in an established business.  Things WILL go wrong, and you have the choice to react poorly, or learn a lesson and move forward.  I've done both. 

Here are ten difficult lessons you’ll eventually learn if you are fortunate enough to see your business transition from “new” to “established” status:

1. Long-time clients will leave

Much like your favorite local bar, every gym has its regulars.  These are the clients that helped lay the foundation of both brand and culture within your service business. 

As you get caught up in the whirlwind of growth within your operation, you may fail to realize that the circumstances of your client’s lives change over time.  People move, jobs change, and expendable income fluctuates.  Eventually, you’re going to lose a client for reasons other than your ability to deliver a quality experience or service.  It’s not your fault, but it will sting. 

Try not to take it personally.  Change is a part of life.

2. Great employees will move on to new steps in their career

We made our first official hire at CSP back in the spring of 2008 when we brought Brian St. Pierre on board.  Brian was fresh out of college and he had a passion for both strength training and performance nutrition.  He was hard working, entrepreneurial-minded, and forthcoming about his goal of eventually pursuing a masters in nutrition. 

We looked a lot younger in 2008...So. Much. Blue.

We had the pleasure of employing Brian for three great years, and CSP became a special place in part because of him.  He’s since chased his dream and managed to secure employment at the world-renowned Precision Nutrition, holding the title Director of Performance Nutrition.  How cool is that?

It isn’t our job to monopolize the best talent in our industry for selfish reasons.  Our job is to provide clients with life changing training opportunities while positively influencing our field as a whole.  I’m proud that we had the chance to influence Brian and his career path.  

3. You’ll have to fire a client or two

This is a problem that you’re unlikely to encounter while in the early stages of operation.  After all, how many new gyms can afford to turn away business?

Business will get better with time, and you’ll eventually find yourself seeking operational efficiencies as you juggle tasks and responsibilities.  Sooner or later a crummy customer is going to help you come to the conclusion that your time, energy, and resources are better spent focusing on clients who require less nurturing and bring a consistently positive attitude to the gym.  Just because your high maintenance clients show up with cash in hand, doesn’t mean you have to accept it.  

Your time is valuable.  Firing the occasional client can make you more efficient.

4. A star client will get hurt

I realize that not every gym has the opportunity to work with athletes.  Those that do, however, need to be aware of the reality that their star pupil is vulnerable to injury just like each of his or her peers.  We can provide all of the arm-care resources under the sun to help a baseball player to minimize the damage that comes with throwing a baseball, but it is unlikely that CSP will ever entirely eliminate the risk that comes with the sport.

We’ve had players do everything right on and off the field with respect to preventative maintenance who still fall on some bad luck as it relates to injuries.  You can’t beat yourself up over it.  Focus on improving your training philosophies and protocols as you reflect on what you’ve learned from the experience. 

5. The cost of doing business will increase

If you’re in the game long enough, you’re going to see the cost of doing business skyrocket.  For example…

We provide health insurance for our coaches here at CSP.  In nearly eight years of operation, I have seen our monthly per-person cost for insurance coverage move from $147.50, to $322.50.  Our coverage package has not changed.  Our employees schedule their annual physicals and fill the occasional prescription.  Otherwise, we’re low-maintenance, inexpensive clients.

Think about those numbers for a second.  The cost of health insurance for my team is now more than twice as expensive as it was back in 2007.  With a team of 8 coaches, that can mean an increase of more than $15K in annual health insurance costs.

Photo credit: southjerseybiz.net

6. You’ll take a big risk all over again when signing a new lease

Every gym owner should aspire to survive the duration of his or her first gym lease.  If you find yourself eye to eye at the negotiating table with a landlord looking to re-up at the conclusion of your term, you’re doing something right.

In most circumstances, you’re going to need to commit to an additional 3-to-5 years of rent.  In our case, that means a commitment to nearly $1M in rent dollars over a 5-year span between our two facilities.  Every time you sign a new lease you are taking a risk reminiscent of that which you took the day you signed your first one.

7. Someone will discuss your brand in a negative light

We all have competition, and competitors will not enjoy seeing you thrive.  Someone will inevitably bad-mouth your business, and the best response is no response at all.  Rise above the negativity.  Exchanging public criticism of your competition will only make you look immature. 

my son's new favorite word is "cheers"...he's really good at it

8. Those lacking integrity may “repurpose” your material

I recently had a consulting client bring it to my attention that a gym in his market had plagiarized a great deal of the copy from our CSP internship page.  This prompted me to run a quick Google search of a very specific sentence from the Expectations of All Applicants portion of our program description.  If you’d like to see a true demonstration of laziness, go ahead and drop this sentence into a search engine: “Present yourself in a manner that will reinforce your status as a role model for impressionable young athletes.”

I made it through the first ten or so examples of blatantly cut and pasted material from our site before I decided that heading on to page two of search results would only serve to make me more angry.  Who would have thought that the copy I wrote back in 2008 would bring so much value to so many people’s businesses?  I honestly don’t know what my recourse is in this scenario.  All I can say is that plagiarism demonstrates a lack of integrity.

The lesson here is that if your intellectual property is the differentiator upon which you make your living, you need to copyright (and trademark) your material immediately.  You should also think long and hard about reusing other people’s material and passing it off as your own because once you’ve been labeled a cheater, it is a hard label to remove.

9. You’ll “age-out” of your targeted demo

If you own a fitness business that works with a specific target market (like baseball players), you are eventually going to be much older than the athletes you are targeting.  Eric and I had an easier time getting inside the minds of 18-22 year olds back when we were 25.  We now find ourselves in our mid-30s, and growing rusty when it comes to trendy applications such as Snapchat and Periscope.

We can either change with the times and work to employ coaches closer in age to our ideal demographic, or declare that “the old way is better” and watch the industry pass us by.  We’ll go with the former option, thank you very much.

10. Your personal priorities will change

When we started this business, we were young, unmarried, and far from being parents.  At that time, my priority list looked like this:

1. Turn CSP into a monster of a business and brand
2. Repeat number one

Today, my list looks a little more like this:

1. Be a good husband and father
2. Maintain and develop a strong business and be a good employer
3. Publish business-specific content and consult for other gym owners

There’s nothing wrong with seeing your priority list change over time.  The problem comes when priorities begin to change and you realize that you’ve yet to create systems and assemble a team that can take on the responsibility of helping you advance the development of your business while you work to juggle new responsibilities. 

Congratulations

If you’ve had one, two, or even ten of the problems outlined above, it means that you’ve been in the game long enough to have an established fitness facility.  This is commendable in an industry featuring so much competition.  I wish you luck, and hope that you continue to encounter some of these issues. 

You’re obviously doing something right. 

Resume Building 101 for Fitness Professionals

I’ve got resumes on the brain.  Reviewing 159 of them over a 3-day span will do that to you.

Monday was the application deadline for our summer internship program here at Cressey Sports Performance (CSP).  While we typically receive roughly 200 internship applications in a given calendar year, upwards of 70% of them are specifically for our summer program, due to the traditional academic calendar.  Just over half of our applicants for the 2016 summer internship are either pursuing a degree in a related field, or will be receiving one this May.

Thanks to the size of this record-setting applicant pool, only 6.3% of candidates will ultimately be offered a spot in our program.  There is no room for error during the application process when spots are this limited.  As far as resumes go, I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Some interesting statistics from this applicant pool:

• 22 of the 159 applications (14% of the pool) were formatted incorrectly despite the fact that requested submission format is featured in bolded and underlined red text within the directions
• 11 candidates submitted incomplete applications, forgetting to include a resume or brief essay
• Only 12 of the applicants were female (a blog for a different day)
• 4 candidates forgot to include the second “e” in “Cressey”…I wonder if anyone ever submitted an application to “Harvrd University” and received an acceptance letter?
• Close to a quarter of the applicants referred to our business as “CP”, as opposed to the “CSP” we legally (and publicly) changed it to 18 months ago

The majority of these mistakes are trivial, but they are the difference-makers when it comes to sorting through 159 applications.  I even had one candidate who was exceptional for the first 90% of his application materials wrap things up by failing to remove [INSERT COMPANY NAME HERE] from his essay template.

During my senior year at Babson College every student had a mandatory appointment scheduled with the Center for Career Development where a faculty member would review and approve our resume for “release” into the world of job applications.  We were taught that when it comes to crafting a readable resume, proper formatting and brevity were of the utmost importance.  What felt like an inconvenience at the time ultimately proved to be a valuable lesson for me.

Nearly 1,000 resumes reviewed - here's some advice

More than 900 internship applications have crossed my desk since we began offering a formal program in the spring of 2008. I have come to some firm conclusions on what makes for a solid candidate on paper.  Here are four resume tips for fitness professionals trying to score jobs that require more than a certification hastily picked up on the internet:

1. You don’t need more than a single page to do it right

Of the 82 applications that arrived from students pursuing a college degree, 64 submitted resumes that were two or more pages long.  Think about this for a second…more than 75% of our candidates with zero years of post-college professional experience have so much experience that they can’t fit it into a single page.  I do not believe that there should be a firm one-page rule in place for resume design, but I am a firm believer in concerning yourself with relevance.  Which leads me to…

2. Irrelevant content wastes time and space

Before you hit “save” on your next resume update, I want you to ask yourself a couple of questions:

Does the likelihood of me securing this strength & conditioning coaching position hinge upon my technical skill set that includes “Microsoft Office Proficient” and “Extensive Adobe Illustrator Experience”?

Will my summer of mowing lawns six years ago be the differentiator I need to stand apart from the crowd?

Will the person reviewing my application be impressed that I made it to the third round of open casting calls for Season 7 of American Idol? (I didn’t make this one up)

I am not advocating for resumes stripped clean of unique professional experience; I’ve written on multiple occasions about our affinity for candidates with military experience and/or backgrounds in small family business.  Instead, I’m saying that every component of your resume should serve a purpose as it relates to the position you are pursuing.

3. Modify EVERY TIME you apply for a job

Much like we differentiate at CSP by offering entirely individualized training materials for every client, you have the opportunity to differentiate yourself from other candidates by presenting an entirely individualized resume crafted specifically with the job in question in mind.  It is obvious to me when a resume or cover letter has been designed to be generic enough to be sent off for multiple job opportunities.

If you’re going to include a “Professional Summary” or “Objective” section, make sure to craft your words strategically.  I’d encourage you to custom-fit the articulation of your skill set and interests to match the role.  This doesn’t mean that it is ok to fabricate experience.  It means that a generic resume stating: “I am passionate about fitness” will be far less impactful than one that includes:

Objective – Secure an internship at Cressey Sports Performance where I will have the opportunity to apply my unique academic background, professional experience, and enthusiasm for helping others through fitness.

4. Find someone to edit your work

Abraham Lincoln is known for having said: “He who represents himself has a fool for a client.”

I share this mentality as it relates to preparing important job application materials.  He who edits his own resume and cover letter for his dream job may soon need to find a new dream.

I had the pleasure of updating my resume for the first time in nearly a decade this past weekend.  I spent close to an hour fine-tuning the formatting and copy.  When I was done, I forwarded it along to my wife and asked her to edit.  She found a typo, poorly articulated segments, and content she deemed to be irrelevant to the opportunity for which I was preparing a current resume (speaking to the students of the SUNY Cortland Fitness Development Program). 

Every change she suggested was appropriate.  What I had prepared was not bad, per se.  It just needed another set of eyes to give it the necessary finishing touch.

Don’t let a lack of professionalism dictate your career ceiling  

Colleges and universities need to begin emphasizing (or reevaluate their delivery of the message of) the importance of professionalism and attention to detail during the job-hunting process.  Every time a degree is awarded, the student becomes an extension of their school’s brand.  When I consistently see poorly formatted and edited application materials coming from graduates of the same program, it not only hurts the candidate’s chances of being offered an interview, but it also decreases the likelihood that I take future applicants from the same school seriously.    

In summary: Keep it simple, keep it relevant, and concern yourself with attention to detail.

3 Hiring Mistakes to Avoid

On more than one occasion during recent weeks I have found myself saying that I feel like an old man attempting to play a young man’s game.  While 34 years of age isn’t necessarily what most would call old, it isn’t exactly young in the eyes of my clientele.

Back in the summer of 2007 when we started our fitness business Eric and I were both 25 years old; a sweet spot where we were just young enough to be perceived as “cool” by the high school athletes, fairly recently removed from college life, and adult enough to be comfortable looking a parent in the eye and asking them for money in exchange for training services.  Unfortunately, time waits for no man, and I now find myself decades older than some of the athletes walking through our doors today.

This is not to say that I have suddenly become less effective at doing my job.  Instead, the value I bring to CSP’s day-to-day operation has shifted away from intensive client interaction and hands-on customer service, toward a role that emphasizes people management and strategic business development.  This change in job function is possible because we’ve assembled a team that can pick up right where I left off as it relates to blurring the line between service provider and friend.

While identifying quality resumes is easy, finding the right “fit” is a whole other story.  Here’s a look at three of the biggest mistakes a fitness service provider can make when hiring to expand (or replenish) a team:

1. Lack of Diversity in Personalities

If you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got.

There’s an understandable comfort zone that comes with hiring people who remind you of yourself.  We already spend more time in a work setting than we probably should, so why not assemble a team of people just like us so that we’re guaranteed to enjoy the company of our colleagues?

This approach is fine if your goal is to remain stagnant as far as typical clientele goes, but businesses need to evolve to survive the test of time.  Ideally, every gym should have a blend of available coaching and personality styles in their arsenal.  You may need a coach who relies on tough-love in communicating the message.  Sometimes it takes a personality with a slightly softer bedside manner to ease a 14 year olds anxiety coming into an uber competitive environment like CSP.  Maybe the key to boosting profits in your boot camp program is finding the biggest, most extroverted personality you can get.

If you simply hire a friend you love training with you are missing an opportunity for your business to accommodate a broader spectrum of clients.  You are also putting yourself one step closer to being dispensable as far as coaching needs go.  Which leads me to…

2. Failure to Embrace Free Thinkers

If your training philosophy isn’t changing in some capacity over time, you’re likely offering a dated training experience.  In discussing programming evolution, Eric once said: “Change is all around us, and if we’re not recognizing that and changing with it, we’ll be in a bad position in no time.”

Photo Credit - adsoftheworld.com

When it comes to hiring, bringing on board a “yes-man” will inevitably stifle evolution of your programming philosophy.  I want CSP’s monthly staff programming meeting to be populated by a collection of strength coaches who are willing to rock the boat if it means that they are able to influence appropriate change in our program design offerings.  Conflicting opinions can be a good thing, as long as we collectively agree on a unified approach by the time this type of meeting ends.

3. Missing the Opportunity to Make Age-Appropriate Hires

The further removed I find myself from high school, the more difficult it is to have organic conversations with most of the athletes populating my gym.  When Tony Gentilcore transitioned away from CSP this past fall it both modified the personality of our business, and opened up a spot on the team that needed to be filled quickly.  While I miss getting to hang out with Tony every day, his departure was an opportunity for us to evolve our team in a direction that would compliment the needs of our youthful target market. 

I recently asked Tony if he could put his finger on the moment when he began to feel a little out of touch with our youngest clients, and he said: 

“I was sitting on the wrong side of 35, and clients looked at me like I had three heads every time I made a Party of Five or Melrose Place reference. Today, more than 90% of my clients are over the age of 30 and conversation between sets seems to flow effortlessly.”

We decided to fill Tony’s coaching spot with Nancy, a 22-year-old fresh out of SUNY Cortland’s Fitness Development Program.  Though Tony’s extensive coaching and programming experience will be missed, Nancy will help CSP as a whole to connect more authentically with the athletes who keep us in business.  She will also bring some much needed gender diversity to our coaching staff, better positioning us to capture a piece of the softball-specific strength & conditioning market.

Hire Strategically

On boarding and properly training a coach is both time consuming and expensive.  Take these three potential mistakes into consideration as you review coaching candidates for your business and you’ll be considerably more likely to make a solid hire. 

My Favorite Thing About Owning A Gym

I’ve decided on my favorite aspect of owning a fitness facility.  Aspiring gym owners are probably not going to like it.

The best part of owning your own “performance enhancement center” isn’t working with professional athletes or avoiding the obligation to cater to the needs of the fat-loss community.  The supposed autonomy that comes with owning your own shop doesn’t come in the form of “making your own hours”.  In fact, you can go ahead and kiss your predetermined and predictable schedule goodbye because that’s as good as gone the moment you decide to open the doors on your own space.

The best part about owning your own gym is the part of the process most people dread: the laborious hours spent hauling equipment, laying flooring, and getting your hands dirty in general. 

This past summer, CSP-Florida Co-Founder Shane Rye managed to grind out 52 consecutive days of work between his gym and on-field coaching duties.  And you know what?  He didn’t bitch about it once.  He realizes that what makes or breaks a young business is the level to which equity holders are willing to go to ensure its success during the earliest stages. 

Shane, Eric, Brian and Tim’s fingerprints are all over the success found in our Florida location.  Eric actually jumped in on the demo process down there and his fingerprints are now all over this toilet as well:

Every once in a while I find myself reminiscing about “the early days” of our business, and none of those memories ever feature specific client training sessions or the high profile athletes we’ve accumulated over the years. 

Instead, I end up laughing about the initial 14-hour workdays culminating with heavy farmers carries at 10:00pm in a space featuring broken windows and no air conditioning.  I remember the 48-hour span where we relocated an entire gym across town using a rented U-Haul truck featuring a lift gate that sat two feet lower than the loading dock at our new space.  You ever try to lift a functional trainer out of a dark truck and on to a loading dock at 3:00am on a school night?  It sucks.

This past Friday I spent my day off replacing the turf in CSP’s pitching cages.  It took me and three other guys a little over four hours to get it done.  I walked away with a sore back, a cut on my right hand that probably could have used a stitch or two, and the memory of a morning at CSP that will likely stick with me for years to come.  When an athlete, parent, or other fitness professional walks through our door and tells me that they love the look and feel of our gym, I can take pride in knowing that I helped to drag all of this shit in here and set it up just right.

In addition to my desire to personally impact the look and feel of our business, here are three reasons why you’ll always see me cutting the turf, mounting the speakers, and hanging the jerseys:

1. Hard work is hard

Owning your own business isn’t supposed to be easy.  Sometimes things need to happen at inconvenient times, under inconvenient circumstances, and the owner needs to suck it up and get it done.  This is why Eric, Tony and I realized early on that our best interns and employees seemed to be products of small family businesses.  We’ve learned that the blue-collar entrepreneurial nature that successful small business owners typically possess is inevitably baked in to the work ethic of their kids.

During elementary school and middle school I had the pleasure of spending the occasional snow day riding in an oil truck alongside one of my dad’s employees.  We’d move from one house to the next hauling a hose from truck to house, delivering home heating oil in miserable conditions. 

So what if your friends are sledding…mom and dad couldn’t stay home from work today so you’re going to learn the value of earning a few bucks the hard way.

By no means does my role at CSP involve continuous manual labor.  My point is that getting your hands dirty every once in a while and stepping outside of your comfort zone for the good of your business is important.  Hard work is hard.  Deal with it.

2. You discover other people’s true character

There are two kinds of clients in my world:  The ones who ask you why you haven’t rolled out the new rolls of turf in the pitching cage yet…and the ones who ask what time you want them to arrive the next day so that they can help with the process.

Chris Carmain and Ryan Leach fall into the latter category.  These two are aspiring professional baseball players who showed up close to 4 hours before CSP opened last Friday to help me and Matt Blake lay some new flooring.  They didn’t ask what was in it for them.  They volunteered and never shied away from unpleasant work.  All they requested was coffee and the opportunity to be the first two guys to throw when we finished the job.

We’ve accumulated a whole lot of clients like Chris and Ryan over the years, and I am immensely grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to welcome them into my network.  While we intentionally align our business with the most recognizable professional athletes on our client roster, the heart and soul of the CSP Family is made up of athletes willing to give up their free time to help me do the dirty work of maintaining a facility.

3. Opportunity to lead by example

“Leadership is being able and willing to do what you ask of others.” 

This is CSP Strength Coach Greg Robins’ definition of leadership.  He discussed the concept in great depth in a guest post on my site this past summer, and I agree with every word he had to say.  I could have assigned a couple of my employees the responsibility of giving our pitching cage a facelift last week and they would have done a fine job.  However, I also would have been perceived as having “big-leagued” (a popular term in a facility overflowing with baseball players) a task that I didn’t want to be burdened by.

Roll up your sleeves.  Demonstrate a willingness to execute the projects that your employees are dreading.  The message needs to be clear: we’re all in this together.

Make some memories

Back in the summer of 2006 I began the One-Year Full-Time MBA Program at Babson College.  From Memorial Day until Labor Day, we got pummeled with homework, exams, and a curriculum that had us on campus 12+ hours a day at least 5 days a week.  There were moments when it felt like a living nightmare, but I survived.  I then eased my way through the lighter workload of the fall and spring semesters leading up to graduation.  When I look back on all of it, I think fondly of the summer experience, and can barely recall classes and projects that took place during the rest of the year.

Owning your own fitness facility has turned out to be a whole lot like my graduate education process.  The early stages will push you to the brink of insanity, but you’ll eventually settle into a comfortable rhythm.  When all is said and done, nobody reminisces about rhythm.  The hard part is what you’ll remember, and for some reason it will all seem enjoyable in hindsight.

Accumulate some sweat equity.  You won't regret it.

Achieving Must-Hire Status - Where Interns Routinely Miss Opportunity

Hoping to score that dream coaching job at the conclusion of your internship program?  Stop trying to impress the boss and start trying to make a lasting impact on the influential people who actually hold the keys to your future.

A “short list” resides in my mind as I type this sentence.  This list contains the names of the first five current or former interns I’d approach if a paid coaching position were to open at one of our two Cressey Sports Performance (CSP) facilities.  While the list is continuously evolving, the way to earn a spot on it rarely changes, and is routinely overlooked.

The Most Common Mistake

There is one sure-fire way to blow an opportunity at earning “must-hire” status at CSP, and that is by wasting your time and energy trying to impress myself or Eric.  At this moment in time, we operate two strength & conditioning facilities, manage the CSP brand, have wives who would love to see more of us, and have toddlers wreaking havoc in our homes.  We don’t have the time or attention span to focus on identifying our next great hire without the insight of others.

There are three different types of gatekeepers who influence the ongoing development of our short list here at CSP.  Here’s some insight on how to go about earning their seals of approval during the internship process:

1. Clients

You know what makes my job a whole lot easier…having a client stomp into my office to declare that I am an idiot if I don’t intend to hire intern so and so.  I have never hired a single coach out of our internship program who failed to inspire more than one of our clients to share this type of unsolicited advice.

We’re in the business of customer service, and your ability to inspire our clients to speak up on your behalf is a whole lot more impressive than your attempt at offering a thought provoking question for Eric during staff in-service.  Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz articulated this best when he said “The only competitive advantage we have is the relationship we have with our people, and the relationship they have built with our customers.”

If you can’t create raving fans during your time on the training floor, you can’t work for me.  It’s just that simple.

2. Staff members not named Pete or Eric

A coaching position at our Massachusetts location became available on October 1st of this past year.  With our absolute busiest period ahead, we knew that we needed all the competent coaches we could get during the months to come.  So, why did it take us 10 weeks to get a new coach on the training floor?

We actually started and ended our employee selection process during a single meeting.  I explained our need for a new team member and asked for suggestions from the rest of the staff.  All seven of my employees promptly told me that we needed to hire Nancy Newell, a coach who had wrapped her summer internship here at CSP just 5 weeks prior.  I explained that both Eric and myself wholeheartedly agreed, but there would be a catch to making it happen…Nancy was two and a half months away from completing her graduate program at SUNY Cortland.

“Are you guys prepared to pick up the slack that comes with being under-staffed and over-crowded if it means that you get to add the personality of your choice to the team in the long run?”

Yes.  Seven yeses, as it turns out. 

Earlier this week I asked Nancy what she did to set herself apart from her peers as an intern. 

“Nothing complicated.  I vacuumed the office every single night even though the checklist called for alternating days because I believe that there’s no such thing as an office being too clean. I volunteered for the tasks that others went out of their way to avoid. I made a habit of reminding myself that coaching is fun, and it was reflected in my body language.”

In short, Nancy focused on doing the little things well, and she did so with a smile on her face.  Her colleagues took notice, and it ultimately earned her a job.  When 100% of my team vouches for you, there’s a 0% chance I will stray from their advice.

3. Trusted professionals within our network

The last piece of the employee selection puzzle for me is collecting insights from professionals I know and trust who have had the opportunity to observe a candidate in action.  Guys like Matt Blake, Mike Reinold and Eric Schoenberg have accumulated their fair share of hours in the midst of the chaos that is a busy CSP.  They all have an appreciation for the type of personality that thrives as a member of our staff.  Most importantly, they’ve got nothing to gain or lose from us adding a new face to the team.

Before I ever pull the trigger on a job offer, I approach these guys for their unbiased take.  The interns who’ve made an effort to engage with these personalities around the gym during their time with us tend to end up on the fast track to a spot on our short list.

The Takeaway

Roughly 100% of our former interns have the technical skill set and training knowledge necessary to competently perform the job of full time strength coach here at CSP.  Unfortunately, a much smaller percentage of this population will take the steps necessary to position themselves as a can’t-fail candidate to be our next great hire.  If you find yourself participating in an internship at CSP or any other similar fitness facility with the hopes of getting hired out of the program, your to-do list should look a little bit like this:

1. Create raving fans.
2. Earn the trust and respect of your colleagues.
3. Appreciate the fact that someone is always watching how you handle yourself around the gym.

Opportunities are never lost; I can assure you that someone will take the one's you've missed.

Is There A Recipe For Great Gym Culture?

No.  Not exactly.

I can’t hand you a to-do list that will help you to recreate the distinctive atmosphere we’ve created here at Cressey Sports Performance (CSP).  There just isn’t a definitive recipe for constructing a great gym culture.  Peter Thiel once said, “The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative.” This rational can be applied to the idea of recreating an existing culture in a different space; it is simply impossible without all variables being identical.   

The CSP culture recipe question is among the most commonly asked of me these days.  During the first three to four years that we were in business, the culture here at CSP was the brainchild of me, Eric and Tony.  The three of us were working six days a week and interacting with every client who came through the door.  We decided on the music.  We rang the cowbell in advance of any client attempting to hit a deadlift PR (we really did have a PR cowbell).  We were the brand.

As times changed and business grew, we incrementally expanded our staff and introduced a collection of new personalities who would help to shape the training experience for our clients.  Us co-founders eventually managed to find a second day off each week, allowing for the “vibe” of our gym to adapt to the personality of the staff on the training floor, and the collection of athletes inside CSP at any given moment.  Our culture changed; not dramatically, but it did change.

If your goal is to convey a culture that is authentic to your team, the game plan can’t be to standardize the personality of your brand or training environment permanently.  You can maximize the authenticity of your existing culture by making sure that your employees feel free to, for lack of a better term, “let their freak flag fly high.”  If you’ve hired employees who possess the ability to be both flexible and reactive in their coaching style, and give them the autonomy that encourages them to be themselves while engaging with clients, you’ll end up with a gym that has character as opposed to manufactured culture.

If my employees felt obligated to constantly deliver a baseball clubhouse atmosphere, Miguel may not have issued a dance-off challenge to Roger Lawson in the middle of the 2015 CSP Fall Seminar...

If you want a manufactured culture, you need to be upfront about said culture in your hiring process to ensure that you’re hiring the right employees to perpetuate it. There’s nothing wrong with this methodology either, but it will make your hiring process more selective.

The culture at CSP is not entirely driven by the personalities doing the coaching.  Much like there is a seasonal component to our clientele, there is very much a seasonal component to our training environment.  There’s a considerable difference between the busiest time of day in the summer months, and the busiest time of day during the winter.  From May through August, college and high school athletes fill the gym and securing a spot on the Ping-Pong table in the athlete’s lounge can be a problem.  When the professional baseball off-season rolls around, and our college athletes are off at school, suddenly interest shifts from the Ping-Pong table to casually tossing around a football prior to getting a lift in.

We’re happy to adjust our clubhouse atmosphere to accommodate the unique interests of the athletes populating the training space at any moment in time.  Our gym culture changes with the introduction of every new intern, with the hiring of any new full time coach, and at the very moment a new client walks through our doors.  Our culture is adaptable.

Every gym on the planet has its own unique culture.  Instead of highlighting the particular skills and personality traits of those inside the facility, many gym owners are concerning themselves with recreating the current trendy training environment found at someone else’s successful business.  We don’t run CSP that way, and I’m confident that is why people admire the culture we’ve built.

Your clients can tell when you’re trying to fake it, and they’re eventually going to see through your insincerity.

3 Important Lessons Reinforced in 2015

2015 has been the most eventful of the 8+ years I have spent overseeing the day-to-day operations of Cressey Sports Performance (CSP). 

It was our first full calendar year of managing two strength & conditioning facilities.  It was a year in which I launched a website and dabbled in some public speaking at fitness industry events.  It was even a year that saw one of the three CSP Co-Founders move on to a new stage in his fitness career.

Big changes.  All good.

With all of these happenings sitting in my rear-view mirror, I’d like to extend three quick thank you’s and highlight three important lessons that have been reinforced for me in 2015.

3 Thank You's to Deliver

Tony Gentilcore

I want to extend one last public “thank you” to Tony for all that he has done to elevate CSP to the level it sits at today.  As mentioned above, Tony made the decision to move on from CSP earlier this fall with the intention of launching his own smaller-scale fitness business.  He is now a one-man show, delivering exceptional fitness instruction out of a training studio in Brookline, MA.

From our training environment and programming philosophy, to our unique company culture, Tony’s fingerprints can be found all over the CSP brand.  Eric and I cannot thank him enough for all that he’s done to positively impact our careers.  So, one last time: Thank you, Tony.

Nick & David Bromberg

The Bromberg brothers took a chance on me.  These guys are the engines that run the Fitness Summit, a critically acclaimed industry event with a cult-like following of annual attendees.  With a 2015 featured presenter list including names such as Alan Aragon, Brett Contreras, Tony Gentilcore, and many more recognizable names from the fitness industry, I had little business being offered a spot on the expert panel. 

Fortunately for me, hours spent discussing the business of fitness with David during his 2012 CSP Fall Internship paid off.  He convinced his big brother to give me a shot at speaking to the Fitness Summit audience, and it was an experience that slightly altered the direction of my career.  The numerous interactions I had with presenters and attendees before, during, and after my presentation ultimately inspired me to launch this website and begin sharing business-related knowledge with the fitness world.

Again, I thank you, gentlemen. 

Katie Dupuis

My wife is a rock-steady partner in parenting, a voice of reason guiding each and every professional move I make, and my best friend in the world.  She tolerates an unreasonable amount of CSP-related discussion every night when I get home from work, weekly requests for blog editing, and many of my other quirks that I’m likely unaware of.

Katie encourages me to take risks, gives my life perspective, and always stands by my side.  There’s truth in the saying that behind every good man is an even better woman.  Thank you for being that person for me, Katie.

3 Important Lessons Reinforced in '15

Insure Your Ability to Provide

I have a close friend who earns a great living Personal Training at a big box gym.  Coming in to the month of December he was recognized as a top performer for a national brand that employs more than 18,000 individuals.  While he’s very good at what he does, this coach is not invincible.  I say this because he recently took a fall during his free time (non-working hours) and had the misfortune of rupturing his patella tendon, requiring surgery and extensive rehab.

Photo Credit: payload.cargocollective.com

What’s worse than being taken off of your feet for 6-8 weeks as a personal trainer?  The answer, is being taken off your feet just as the majority of your gym’s members are setting new year’s resolutions that involve exercise-related objectives.  If you are a fitness professional who has not yet investigated your options as it relates to short-term disability insurance, I’d strongly encourage you do so.  Your livelihood is tied up in your ability to be upright, and even the healthiest of trainers and coaches are susceptible to freak accidents.

Hire an Accountant

If you’re reading my blog right now, you’ve likely outgrown TurboTax, TaxAct.com, or any other web-based do-it-yourself tax services.  While many of you are experts within the realm of delivering fitness instruction, it is unlikely that you possess similar levels of expertise in accounting, tax or legal issues. 

As I now find myself managing a new business (fitness business consulting) in addition to my CSP responsibilities, I intend to lean heavily on my accountant Tom to outline the implications and opportunities that come with the change.  I may not know my options as it relates to writing off home office expenses at this moment in time, but you can be sure that Tom will hit me with a thorough tutorial between now and April 15th.

I encourage you to read this related blog post Eric published back in 2010.  I may even ask him to revise the title to read “The Single Dumbest Thing Trainers and Fitness Business Owners Do”.

Get Your Reps In

I had sports talk radio playing in my car during a recent commute and was surprised to hear one of the hosts discussing the possibility that Steph Curry could win the title of the NBA’s Most Improved Player during the season following him earning an NBA Title AND a League MVP Award.  Somebody please tell me how the “best player in the world” manages to go out and become the most improved player the following year?  I decided to dig a little deeper.

I soon came to find out that Curry is famous for his practice schedule, work ethic, and pre-game shooting regimen.  In a recent Men’s Health interview, he explained: “You either put the work in and reap the benefits of what you’re doing, or you try to take shortcuts and think you’re going to be alright.” 

When I read this quote I was reminded of Tony Bonvechio’s strong performance at our 2015 CSP Fall Seminar.  At the conclusion of the event we sent out an electronic questionnaire to gather attendee feedback so that we can improve future events.  With more than half of the 150+ attendees taking the time to provide detailed responses and ratings, Tony came away with the high score of 93% approval on his presentation.  Feedback on his performance consistently featured terms such as “polished” and “clearly articulated.” 

I asked Tony to explain his preparation process to our team during a staff meeting the following week.  He told us that he’d delivered his presentation in it’s entirety four separate times during the days leading up to the event.  “My wife heard it start-to-finish on two occasions. I ran through it once while by myself in an empty room. My dog Eddie even watched me give it once.”

Put quite simply, Tony got his reps in, and it was evident in his smooth and comfortable delivery.  If you are a fitness business owner or even a personal trainer selling fitness instruction services, the best way to sell with conviction is to get your reps in.  Take some time to outline the most difficult questions you’ve encountered while giving the pitch, and become a pro at delivering the appropriate answers to your spouse, an empty room, or even your dog.  Just get your reps in.

We're on to 2016

Here's to a happy, healthy, and productive 2016 for all of my readers!

Books, Blogs & Business – Installment 3

Book Report - Zero to One, by Peter Thiel

There is just a single book that I made time to read more than once this past year, and that is Zero To One.  I recommend this book just about every time I’m asked for a reading suggestion, and routinely revisit the text for inspiration when preparing my blog or assembling a fitness business presentation.

 If asked to boil this book down to a single message, I’d go with the following:

 The best businesses thrive because of their ability to differentiate, as opposed to their ability to compete.

Thankfully, I don’t need to limit myself to a single message.  Here are three quotes from Zero To One that resonated with me as it relates to operating within the business of fitness:

1. "Instead of working tirelessly to make yourself indistinguishable, strive to be great at something substantive -- to be a monopoly of one."

When are aspiring gym owners going to stop assuming that the world wants more fitness facilities instead of different ones?  If you’re going to thrive within this hyper-competitive industry, you should be working hard to capture a specific niche. Thiel effectively described the importance of this concept when he wrote:

 "All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem.  All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition."

This concept also applies to internship and job applicants.  My email account is full of candidates who appear to be indistinguishable in a resume format.  From academic experience to prior employment descriptions, the majority of the coaching candidates I consider appear to be the same person on paper. 

So, why is it that I often end up accepting guys like Roger Lawson to our internship program?  Roger came to CSP with limited coaching experience and an English Literature degree.  The difference between Roger and everyone else was his unmatched charismatic nature, an impressive ability to engage with strangers on the training floor in a moment’s notice, and a televised top-ten finish in the Rock-Paper-Scissors World Championship (true story).

Roger tracked me down to hand-deliver his internship application while in between presentations at a 2009 fitness seminar. He approached me with a firm handshake, looked me in the eye, and told me how his positive attitude and desire to learn would be an asset to our team and our business as a whole.  He was anything but indistinguishable.

Roger was (and continues to be) great at something substantive.  Roger was a master at the art of being an extrovert.

2. "A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator."

Yesterday I found myself in the midst of an extended discussion regarding the design, development, and implementation of an internship program that proves to be beneficial to both the intern and the employer.  One of the questions I was asked related to the risk involved in providing access to 100% of our instructional videos, recorded staff in-services, and other proprietary continuing education materials knowing that an accepted intern could choose to bow out of the program early, or even before getting started. 

I explained that any former CSP intern, including those who were with us for as little as a few weeks, will ultimately become an extension of our brand.  The sooner I can get them “up to speed”, the more likely they are to reflect our business in a positive light moving forward.  I also explained that there’s a big difference between having access to our resources, and fully understanding how to put it all together to create effective programming for an athlete with unique needs.

The great thing about “sharing your secret” is that, when done properly, it demonstrates your unique area of expertise or skill set.  We share free content every week within our “Technique Tuesday” video series featured on Facebook.  These weekly video installments allow Tony Bonvechio to push the powerlifting world in a positive direction by emphasizing proper and safe execution of common movements and exercises.  With over 100,000 views after just 25 instructional videos, Tony is adding “fellow conspirators” on a weekly basis. 

3. "The most valuable businesses of the coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete."

My wife and I recently stopped at a restaurant at JFK International Airport for a meal during a layover.  We sat down at a table equipped with an iPad for every single customer.  Instead of conversing with a server about the intricacies of the menu, we had a flashy collection of stock food photography and a “user-friendly” interface that would theoretically streamline our ordering process and improve our dining experience.  Instead, I found myself wavering on a simple meal decision that would typically be settled by asking my server “which would you recommend?”  By the time I was done eating I felt connected to the internet and disconnected from my wife.

As we inch closer and closer to a world involving cars that drive themselves, it stands to reason that options will continue to pop up allowing fitness enthusiasts to automate just about every aspect of their exercise efforts.  Thankfully, one arena that will never be commandeered entirely by technology is human-to-human interaction.  Much of the value in our services here at CSP is tied up in the interaction an athlete experiences with both our staff and fellow clients while on our training floor.  Apple could ship us a pallet of free iPads for athletes to use as they track their program execution here at CSP, and we’d still return them all in favor of our preferred method of pencil, paper and a clip-board.

For as long as we are in business, the personalities and skills possessed by the coaches on my staff will take precedence over the technology available in the market.

Next on the bookshelf -- Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown

Happy holidays to all!