This is meta mentors, strategies, tactics and skills to help other entrepreneurs in about five minutes. Today, I want to talk about clarity. Clarity is often the best gift that you can give to somebody. And it's especially valuable because very few people are willing to do it. The reason that people are unwilling to be clear with their employees, with their mentees with their friends with their spouse, is because it's painful for the doer, the giver, the mentor, the employer. Here's why it's so important.

And I learned this lesson from my own gym. Years ago, I had this trainer named Jared. And Jared was a nice kid, you know, showed up on time really well presented. The problem was that he was very quiet, meek, shy, you couldn't really put him in front of a group and the position that I had was for a group coach. And so with his personal training clients, he was okay. And then I put them in front of a group and it would be boring, be silent and be dead. People would complain, people would shift, they'd go to other groups, they'd write me an email. And so after about three months of this, I said, Okay, Jared, it's time for your evaluation. And I said, You're doing well, you could do with a little bit more presence. Okay, so notice that I'm not being clear, right? I'm giving him like a hint or telling him something that makes sense in my brain. But he's probably interpreting it completely differently. So three months passed, and he's no better. We do another evaluation, Jared, okay, man, things are going well, I really need you to get loud in groups. So I want you to shadow Tyler, I want you to do what Tyler does, okay. Again, not directly making the connection, hoping that he will pick up on what Tyler is doing and take the right lesson from it didn't work three months later, he's still way too quiet in groups. The groups are boring, and people have given up on them. I meet with them again, Jared, Look, dude, to be a group coach, you have to be able to project your voice. You have to have onstage presence you have to present. Pretend that you're being an entertainer that you're on stage, you have to be loud. Got it? Yep, I can do that. No problem. Now at this point, we're nine months in and I'm thinking, this kid has a d minus, I'm going to fire him. He's thinking I'm a B plus, I've got one little thing to correct. But everything else is great. Finally, with two weeks ago, in his contract, I said, you know, the best favor that I can do this kid is to tell him he's on the hotline. And so I snagged him in between classes. And I said, Jared, look, I know, this isn't an evaluation period. But I got to tell you, if you can't get louder and more present in classes, I'm not going to renew your contract in two weeks. And it was a shock. And the big lesson here is that you're better to give people bad news, especially as it's happening than to have it be a shock later. Now, how does this translate into mentorship? Well, as mentors, we are always walking this fine line between empathy, and directness. And I know some of us are more comfortable being direct, some of us are maybe too comfortable. And we could use a little bit more empathy. But a lot of us are too comfortable being empathetic. And instead of telling people the real reason that they need to do something, we couch it, right, we dance around a little bit, we give hints, we're not clear. And when we're not clear, we're not actually helping the client, because there is nobody else in their life, who will give them this level of clarity that we are literally being paid to do. To brain is all about that dichotomy of empathy, and clarity. And sometimes the best favor that you can do to people is with people is to give them the clarity that they can't get anywhere else. You can be tactful, you can be polite, you can be caring, but ultimately, if we don't get them absolute clarity, and make sure that they understand what we're saying, we're not doing our job. Here's an example. I have a gym owner who is moved out of state, he has left his gym in the hands of his general manager, a general manager, by nature is not going to grow a gym, they're an operator, they can fulfill up to a standard, they can live by the playbook. They can hold other people maybe up to the standard of the playbook. They can't do that and be the marketer. If they can be an amazing operator and an amazing marketer. They should probably be an entrepreneur. But in this case, the gym is slowly going downhill. This happened to my gym, and I know that the conversation I needed to have when it was happening was one of clarity. And so the conversation has to be Listen,

client gym owner, your GM is not going to grow your gym, you have two choices. The first is you take over the marketing and you take on the responsibility for growing your gym. The second is you sell it while it's still worth something. Now that sounds harsh, but let's face it, every single month that goes by that I don't give him that kind of clarity is a waste of time because every single month that goes by the gym becomes worth less he gets more frustrated, more distracted, the general manager gets more and more burned out and he loses more money. It's

Some point the biggest gift that we can give people is absolute clarity and great mentors with experience know when it's time to give that gift Hope it helps thank you for your service.