Tips for Hiring Your First Employee in Your Fitness Business
Transcript:
Hey, are you looking to hire your first coach? Are you looking to get a new employee? Are you looking to expand what your business does currently? Well,
this video is all about that you’re on the right spot. Hey, my name is Mike, I’m founder and co owner of Janaza. We do fitness, performance and restoration. And we’re a company about open sourcing what we’ve been doing for the past decade to make it happen for everyone else in the industry. So a little bit of history, we’ve hired over 20 different coaches in the timespan of 10 years, most of them have been college aged coaches that have stayed with us for an average of more than two years. And we currently have five full time movement coaches, who all make salaries, even through the global pandemic, is a big deal. Because if we’ve done something amazingly well, we’ve hired the right staff, we’ve expanded beyond just my reach when this all started. And that’s a huge piece of the puzzle when you want to leverage your time, grow your fitness business, or any business, if that matter. And make sure you have the impact that you want to have, and have the life that you want to have, versus just being married to a job. So let me dive into this one. And I want you to know that it’s all about not finding a replication of you, you are not replicatable because you’re unique. If you’ve started a company, if you have a brand that you want to push out to the world, and you’re tired of doing all yourself, you have to realize that there’s more people out there that have amazing, unique skill sets. If you tried to just fill your own shoes, again, you’re going to fail and fail and fail again. Because you can have expectations that someone needs to be just like you in reality is there’s only you. So I want you to put down that stress put down that mindset like Ah, man, there’s just no one who can do it just like me, they don’t need to do it just like you. They need to have your heart and share your passion for the industry you’re in for the customers that you share for the product that you want to put out. Let me share that, again. They need to share your heart and your passion. That’s what’s the most important piece, not be a replication of you. Because again, there’s no one else like you. So give yourself a high five, you’re the best person for you. What’s really important, we found out that we want to hire people, we want to hire people to expand our purpose and our passion is to find people that are humble, super important, super important. And as a leader, you got to check. Are you humble? Do you have that ability to have a growth mindset versus fixed mindset, then you want to hire people that have that same drive that same achievement, that you have not the same level, because if you’re the owner, if you’re the founder, you have the highest drive. But it has people that have that same hunger for growth. And then the last thing, and one of the most important things, of course, made the top three list is have people that are smart, not just smart in the books, but people smart, they can communicate and have that open vulnerability to be growth minded to say that they’ve messed up and they messed up, but also put their foot down and say you know what, this is the best way that we have to go and have that ability to say that and not ruin someone’s day, or lose that customer because it just couldn’t control their temple, etc, etc. So those three things are one of the most important port aspects when we talk about replicating ourselves and hire a new employee to take on this, this brand that you want to have. And here’s the last thing I really want you to consider. And just just the whole process of replicating yourself, within your own business, or your own company, or your own brand, is that you need to hire the right person, then teach them the right things. I’m gonna say that, again, we hire so many coaches that have not the highest level of knowledge about biomechanical process, or training and conditioning, that’s okay. Because we teach them that and it’s almost a benefit. Because we teach them exactly what and how and why they do what they do for STEM bringing, in a sense, the old ways of thinking, other ways of thinking that would conflict with what we do. And we talk a lot more about that as you get deeper in this video. So here’s how it all started. And here’s what you need to do is I need to give my business, a life and a voice versus just being me just being me all by myself. What would Michael do. Now sound about what Michael would do is about what Jim Nazo would do, who would have Nazo higher and to do that it’s really about having a few different things dialed in. And I’m going to put some action items here for you right now as you if you don’t have a minute mission statement, you got to build one. If you don’t have core values, you got to write some down if you don’t have a descriptive state statement of what your business does, you need to have that down because it can’t be coming from you has to be coming from the business. So let me just kind of tackle a few of what we did, and are talking about what our mission statement was. And it’s to provide a transformational fitness model for each individual member that encourages total well being, and deepens the respect for this God given gift of movement. That was so important. Now, to be honest with you, do I read that every day? No way. But do I have want to have someone coming in who’s excited about this job and this industry and wants to kind of attach to what we’re doing, they need to have that same understanding, and that core essence, that says, ooh, this is a business that I think I can get on the bus with, because that’s super important. And you can always refer back to that statement. And then we had to put down our core values, because if someone was going to attach to the Janaza, brand or your brand, it’s important that they have these underlying ways of thinking that you’ve made. And they say, This is what our ethos is. And if you’re gone, you’re never you’re not there. They need to be able to answer their own questions, say, Well, what would the owners do? Or what would janazah or the business do, if I’m all by myself, and here’s what we put down. That if they have to think about have values of cutting edge innovation, that they have to always be thinking about how to escalate quality, that they’re always mindful of intentional partnership with our members. They have undeniable integrity. And they’re constantly putting themselves in that discipline mindset to learn. And if our employees and I thought to myself would ever make a decision, and that was essentially the wrong decision. But they put these five things at the top of their heart in their decision making, but they still made the wrong decisions. We’ve still back them, because they put the intentions. And they put the actions with that, even if they were just off the mark. So it was a big deal for us when we thought about how do I give someone this baby this business that I’ve created? And still have them be making decisions when I’m not there? That’s a big, big, big part. And the last one is, what does the company do? And how can I describe it to people, especially if you’re a new brand? That’s not as a well known as these huge, huge players? If someone asked you what Apple does was pretty simple. Some ask you what Tesla does? Well, that’s pretty simple. What about Amazon? Well, everyone knows what they do. But what does your business do? Here’s what we had to write down, says Janaza provides an innovative environment for all demographics, into which we train performance, conditioning and rehabilitation. Its programs challenged the entire body in the authentic movement patterns that required to live life more fully and engage in all sports at a higher level. All workout sessions involve three dimensional movement patterns, and an encouraging and team supportive atmosphere. The overall objective for juveniles is to train and discipline the whole person in the gym, so that they will fully maximize their abilities outside the gym. And that was so important that a coach or a new employee would come on, like, this is what our company does. And it’s how do we do those things? Well, now we can expand the programming all envelope to fulfill that descriptive statement. And then another big thing that we had all of our new hires did is set up a set of thoughts and, and basically expectations that they can attach to route themselves to swim on day one, regardless of how intense our training was, or was not. They would be able to say, Okay, I at least know what they’re asking of me. And these are things that come out of you. But also out of your business. Maybe your business has a new lifeblood, it’s its own living thing. And it has its own personality, its own mindset. So here’s where our expectations were. Again, this is for the industry of fitness and wellness. So we got to be committed to doing our best. Honor your commitments, maintain confidentiality, be orientated about members conversations, because it’s a high competition place, right. Never miss greeting our members by name, don’t distract from a session as a participant, if you’re working out, maintain open communication with the owners. Don’t assume something, go the extra mile, professionalism at all times. Be early and be prepared and avoid conflicts of interest. These are parts that our industry has to we feel, be rock solid in and you’re gonna write that down for what your business is or your industry is. But it’s super important that when we started this whole process, we had those four key points, a mission statement, some core values, a description, statement, and expectations. And those are things that we had to sit down and write down and put the time and energy in. And that was So, so critical to get it off our heads and into someone else’s hands. So when you start chat with somebody again and start going through that process of identifying Is this the right person, you have these to rely upon and not be jumping from one foot to the other foot remembering like, Oh, what do I say you have a different conversation with each person, it’s really important that you have that, again, that rootedness in what your business and your brand is going for. Now, besides all these different things, it’s really about do I want to have someone following the same learning curve that I had to go through that you had to go through what I want them to start from a new learning curve and a higher learning curve. And that’s what writing all these different prices down did for me, and did for our entire team. So each person who comes on board is starting much faster, much higher, can can accelerate much quicker than the person before them. And that’s what it’s all about, is making your team and your business grow faster. But also with the same quality and the learning curve that you’ve already gone through, versus trying to reinvent the wheel each time and making the same mistakes each time. Just slows you down takes so much energy. And it’s a super challenging thing to do when you spend all day fighting fires versus growing your your business. Now, here’s a few things I want you to think about as well. When you want to start providing direction and context towards new hires. And you want to start basically providing them to learn faster than you did. And you start needing to write down your procedures, your operations, what you expect from them to take that job from you, particularly a part of your job, new or brand new job. So this is what we did, we started writing down again, this is for the fitness industries, particularly his opening and closing procedures. What do we do when we first come in? That gets this engine started and gets the energy hyped? And then what do we do when we close down to ensure that everything’s safe, secure, the i’s are dotted, the T’s are crossed, and we’re ready to go. First thing tomorrow morning? And then what are those things that we need to do to run our products deliver our service? What did we did was a checklist for making a workout from complete start to complete end, we just started jotting those things down. And then how do we even take care of customer service or client interactions? What are the things that are must say is our must conversations we have to have or points have to gain to gain some as health and focus in trust, as we as we coach them. And then what are some simple FAQs that clients or new members coming in have questions about or interested in, you can already let them know like, Hey, here’s some things you can I’m probably gonna have right off the top of your head just to make sure that people are getting quick responses, and you’re not spending your entire time researching or asking around for the answers. And then here’s a big one that I saved on the last is making sure you have your consistent educational guidelines or knowledge guidelines that they fit into. Now, if you’re in engineering, or if you’re in the medical field, those are taken care of by schooling or traditional academia already. But if you’re in a field that doesn’t have that necessarily that license standpoint of how to do something, from a basic level, you can have to create that yourself or fulfill it through other partnerships. So we had to say here is our limited knowledge base you have to come into with just like you’d go into any other field, as it previously mentioned. And that has to jive with the methodology that you’re with. And here’s what matters so much is that you’re all all of you, all of you are on the same lake. Now, you may be on different boats, doing few different jobs, but you’re all on the same like going the same direction. Make sure each one of you is challenging innovation and growth versus stagnation and comfort.
What do you do to train them? What do you do to actually make them skilled in your job? Well, the best place to start, especially in the fitness industry, is have them shatter you. Let’s not forget about the days of the true apprenticeship, that they just actually went alongside you in that job. They saw what you saw, they did what you did, they heard the conversations. This aspect of shadowing and apprenticeship, I believe is a huge has a huge comeback. Because it’s about really learning and learning by doing particularly, and having that insight that only you have versus putting them in an artificial environment and hope that those skills are taken into heart and into into effect. This is my absolute next step for you is think about how they can shouty verts a paid opportunity or an internship through a local college or university. Think about how you can make those next steps they can actually be trained by you versus just learn off of a piece of paper or hope hoping, hoping that they’re good enough. So I hope this made some helpful points, some big takeaways and for taking you and starting to say how can I bring more people into my team and expanding your brand
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