Care-Coach-Lead

Throughout a coach's career, there is almost always some sort of evolution. In fact, evolution is necessary in order to become a successful coach.

In this episode of the SFB Show, I sat down with Matt DellaValle, Chief Fitness Officer of NC.FIT to discuss the evolution of a coach, and specifically Matt's personal evolution from CrossFit coach to the coach he is today. He talks about how CrossFit helped shape him into the coach he is now, and why effort, focus and intentionality wherever you're at can help you grow into the position you're meant to be in. Matt also talks about how his corporate skills have helped him in his current position, and how following passion and putting in the effort really can pay off. 

Spend 2 ½ days with me and my team getting the full behind-the-scenes experience of how we run our gym, learning how to run an exceptional business, and getting your 1-on-1 questions answered in real time. 

This immersion is designed for gym owners, although we do plan to offer experiences for coaches in the future. The immersion will take place Monday through Wednesday on the dates listed below. Each group will be limited to no more than 3 gyms and no more than 4 total people, so we can maximize the amount of 1-on-1 discussion and troubleshooting, and tailor the immersion experience to you. 

If you are interested, head over to sevenfigurebox.com/immersion

When we first started our gym, we rejected the policy-laden corporate structure that we saw at most globo gyms.  We aimed to create a more relaxed, "clubhouse" feel, where people would want to hang out for hours on end.

Over time though, we realized that policies weren't an obstacle to creating a great culture or experience, but the very thing that allowed us to protect and sustain the great culture we already had in place, for the most amount of people.

But adding new policies at will can quickly become overkill, especially if you are trying to eradicate every potential issue that comes up in the gym with a new policy.

And the mistake we see most gym owners make is that they often set policies in private with their team, that they aren't willing to uphold in public when it's time to address it 1-on-1 with a member.  This leads to lack of clarity among your team, and a policy that no longer holds any weight.

In this episode, my brother Tony is back on the show with me to discuss all things policies.  We discuss how better coaching can eradicate the need for many policies, and the 3 different types of policies you should consider having at your gym, to maximize team buy-in and create the best experience for your customers.

Often times it's easy to let our fear of sales to get in the way of listening, understanding, and being empathetic to our clients' wants and needs.

Our job as coaches and gym owners is to help people. If we stop overthinking sales and simply do our job to hear our clients out, it actually has the potential to lead to far more sales, and will feel like a lot less work in the long run.

Today I sit down with FitTown Head Coach Austin Bettigrew to discuss one of his personal training clients who initially planned to do our start up package and hop into group classes. After a few sessions together and a long discussion about what this particular client really wanted, Austin ended up selling a 30 session PT package and Nutrition Coaching, simply by listening to the needs of the person sitting in front of him.

In this episode, Austin details out this story, and we discuss why it would have been selfish to NOT sell more to this client.

Over the past 8 years, we've been evolving our gym constantly. As we've grown, we've made decisions and changes based on what we felt was best for the members, coaches and business as a whole. 

Ultimately, any "final decision" is about what we feel is best for our members based on our day-to-day experiences as gym owners. In this episode of the SFB show, I detail out 5 things we've eliminated from our gym in the past 5 years, and why I think this has helped our business thrive, and built better relationships in the long run. 

We’ve all heard it a million times that we need to be creating more content.

But most gym owners and coaches are already spending time creating content (even if it’s as simple as an occasional Facebook post or Instagram story) and dedicating more time to content can often feel like it's coming at the expense of other more important tasks.

By bringing more intention and strategy to your content though, you have the ability to transform your content from being seen for a day or two, to being utilized as a piece of your brand for years on end.

And instead of people seeing your content and feeling good for a moment, you can use your content to build a relationship with your client, and eventually convert that into a sale.

This episode discusses which pieces of content have the best lifespan, and how you can build a supporting strategy around your content, to make sure that every piece of content is providing a positive return for you and the business.

The reality is, people like to be around other people. 

This is the basis of The Nightclub Phenomenon, and it came up for us at FitTown just this past week. We decided to remove some classes and shift the schedule around to better utilize prime times. We've found that eliminating these classes short term, actually benefits long term success.

Why? Because people like the presence of other people. When you go for a night out, you don't want to be at an empty bar. If you're primarily operating a group class model, your members come expecting to be around other members. 

In this episode of the SFB podcast, Andrew discusses The Nightclub Phenomenon, and how this might be best applied to your micro-gym. 

Most coaches and gym owners analyze programming based on their own personal preferences.

Does that workout look fun or boring?

Do I like the exercises?

Does the rep scheme look cool?

But being able to analyze programming beyond this surface level is key to creating a balanced program that keeps clients excited and engaged for years to come.

Instead, we should be asking questions like...

What are the primary movement patterns and the volumes of those movement patterns?

Do we have a variety of time domains, intervals, and intensity levels?

Do we have a balance of exercises and workout formats?

Are the rep ranges and ratios appropriate for each exercise?

How will our fastest and slowest athletes fare on this workout?

Will this workout work in our biggest and smallest classes?

When we are able to ask questions like these, we go from seeing a week of workouts in blurry black-and-white, to seeing them in high-definition, full-color, 4k.

In today's episode, I break down in detail how I analyze a week of programming at our gym, so you can understand how to do the same thing at your gym.  By developing this skill set, you can begin to align your brand with the workouts you put out each day, regardless of whether you run a CrossFit, boot camp, strength-focused, or cardio-based gym.

Jason Ackerman is a jack of all trades in the CrossFit world and the creator of the Best Hour of Their Day podcast.

Jason comes on the show to debate the merit of the hook grip, and to share what he feels are the greatest areas of improvement for most coaches.

We discuss how he manages the infinite amount of ideas and projects he has, and how he has built one of the most successful podcasts in the fitness industry, in less than 2 years.

A coaching friend of mine recently shot this question over to me via email, and I'm taking the time to answer it on today's podcast.

The simple answer is No.  There are successful gyms that run all types of business models.

Places like Orange Theory, Barry's Bootcamp, and Soul Cycle have been able to grow very successful class-based franchises with little to no personal training.  On the flip side, there are lots of smaller personal training studios that have found success without doing any group classes.

For most micro gyms in the CrossFit and functional fitness space, they are trying to run a hybrid model combining PT and group classes, and trying to figure out what the right balance of both is.

My advice is to decide what you want your primary service to be, and make sure that is able to fully support you, your team, and the business, before investing too much time and energy in the other service.

If you are primarily a group-class facility, then your facility should be able to survive and thrive long term, even if you didn't run a single PT session.  Personal training can then serve as a bonus to your revenue and profits, as well as a great way for your coaching staff to create careers for themselves, rather than a bandaid on a poorly run, or poorly priced, group class membership.

Today's episode breaks this down in detail, and should provide you with a better framework for how to think about personal training's place in a group class facility.