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The 3C’s of Chaos Management

The 3C’s of Chaos Management

The 3C's of Chaos Management - EntrepreneurshipWe all know by now if you’re going to own your own business and be an entrepreneur chaos is nothing new.

In fact we must always work to embrace the chaos as the only time to worry is when chaos is enveloped by calm.

When all is “calm” that’s a clear indication you’re not pushing, reaching, stretching or evolving fast enough as a company or team and will be the time you’re entrepreneurship is at real risk.

So this week’s topic is “Chaos Management.”

How do we handle and embrace chaos so that we don’t become overly stressed or burnt out?

Let me share with you the concept of the 3C’s of Chaos Management.

If you’re striving and pushing as hard as you can life will always be chaotic.

Chaos attempts to break us, burn us out, or leave us paralyzed due to stress, this is the paradox of achievement.

In order to reach a new level of success or achievement we must face and avoid, or overcome burnout, mitigate stress, and still find time for joy and happiness in the midst of continually urgent demands.

Now success can be many things: helping more people become the best versions of themselves, finding more time to do things you love, establish more and more meaningful relationships and so on.

No matter how you define success to reach a higher level of success we must increase our level of output or expenditure to that activity. Make sense? (ex. Even reducing stress requires greater output; just the output might be different such as allocating more time for meditation and reflection.)

So what are the 3C’s of Chaos Management?

First is Control.

With all the demands upon us inevitably some of that burden is within your “wheelhouse” the things that seem easier than the rest.

Usually we focus on these things first, they bother us less because we’re comfortable with what we’re facing, control is the easy part (but still make it a habit to deal with these items first because they increase confidence which will help with the remaining 2Cs.)

Next is Change.

What skills can you learn this week? How can you become more competent in what you already know? What things are you doing that you can do better at? What systems do we have that you see we could make more efficient? Is there a better way of doing something?

The real mark of embracing change is to take ownership and lead from the front; but as leaders we must really strive for our team to act in the same way.

We want them to feel comfortable and confident to vocalize ideas for improvements, ask for permission or take action to make improvements and then share their successes with their direct reports and team members.

Make it a safe place to fail and affirm that the only real failure is to fail to act or tray. (In our organization the only caveats being if there is a risk of someone getting hurt or a significant financial risk you must clear it with your direct report first.)

This is one of the purposes of the frequent reviews in an effort to increase collaboration and support change as a whole.

Finally is Cope with what you can’t Control or Change.

Like I said above the paradox of success is we must embrace the chaos that comes with stretching in any area but with that there will always be things that there’s nothing you can do about right now.

Do your best to embrace, accept and move on, not everything will work, it’s certainly not going to be easy, you will let people or yourself down from time to time.

In the end coping is a part of striving and it’s just a matter of asking yourself these two questions for all important affirmation:

  • Did I/Have I done the best I possibly could?
  • Has my positive impact/feedback outweighed that which I can’t control/negative feedback?

Remember without chaos you are at risk for extinction.

Don’t dread being busy, the unknown or the stress of responsibility for if you do you’re in dreadful danger of adding to the statistic of entrepreneurial failure!

You’ve got this!

P.S. The image in the meme above is one of my own taken on a trip to Iceland last February at an amazing place called “Diamond Beach” I highly recommend checking it out if you ever get a chance!


The Dream Team!

Managing and Leading a High Performance Team in 2018

The Dream Team!

The Dream Team!

It’s humbling to say the least; but leadership has not come naturally to me.

In fact it’s awkward to vocalize it (though a kind of therapy) I never realized I was such an introverted person.

I mean I guess maybe I should have clued in as I’ve always joked, “I like my dogs better than most people.”

But all jokes aside I think you get the point, leadership has been a challenge and as such my teams have seen many plateaus in my businesses that have been hard to get through and usually resulted in some turn over.

Now that’s not to say we don’t have great teams, or that we haven’t had great success, or even that we’ve had bad company culture. None of those things are true; but what is, is that it became clear to me that management and leadership needed to improve to position our companies for next level massive growth.

So today I wanted to share with you some of my biggest breakthroughs in building a team that’s going to let you add more digits to your revenue and profits.

Rule #1: You need more applicants.

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made repeatedly is we weren’t getting enough, reviewing enough, and interviewing enough applicants for an open position.

On average I now like to see at least 50 applicants for any position, whether that’s a trainer or an administrative role.

Many of you might be thinking; how do I even get that many applications quickly?

Well for me that’s come from three specific sources: mailing to my email list, spending money on paid posts on Facebook and paid job postings on sites like Indeed.ca/.com

All of our applicants now start their process with a group interview. That group interview begins with a workout after which they meet with my manager who asks the following questions: (If you’ve read the highly impactful book Double, Double by Cameron Herold you might recognize some of these, I you haven’t you should!)

  1. What are your favourite books and why?
  2. What is your favourite movie, and why?
  3. What car is most similar to you as a person, and why?
  4. What was the most stressful time of your life, and why?
  5. What was the most complex project/situation you ever led, and why?
  6. What stresses you out?
  7. Why do you want to work here?
  8. Who is the best candidate in the room, and why?
  9. If we were to hire two people, and you were one of them, who would you want us to hire to work with you?
  10. When could you start?
  11. *(Only ask this if there are not clients within ear shot, but great finishing question) How much do you need to earn per hour/annually in year one? Year three?

Our favourite time for group interviews is Friday at 5:30-7:00 PM (especially on long weekends.)

This process has saved us so much time and easily allows us to find the 3-5 top tier superstars out of the 50 applications we receive. These candidates then progress to a 90-minute second interview with me via Facebook messenger (great way to get them to add you as friends so you can see what their social feed looks like since people’s profiles are getting harder to find.)

This single adjustment completely reshaped my team in less than 60 days.

Rule #2: Foster communication, frequent communication.

I’ve been referring to it a lot lately, I guess because leadership and management has been on my mind so much.

I heard someone speak to a reference from Harvard Business School recently that went something like this, “as much as 86% of businesses that fail, fail because of poor communication, not a bad product or bad service.”

I have no idea if this is accurate but I’d be willing to bet that it is.

It’s a simple fact that any business that is actively trying to grow is going to be a bit disorganized, if you’re not you can’t be growing as fast as possible, that’s just the way it is.

When organization lacks; outcomes are dictated by the ability of the team members to make good decisions in that moment, let’s face it when chaos ensues we all default to perception and instinct and kind of make it up as we go.

Your goal is of course to ensure that the thought process that leads to those decisions is as much in line with your vision as possible. So how do you do that?

Well we’ve had massive success in just a short time using really regular employee reviews. (Weekly for the first 90 days, then monthly after that.)

(CLICK HERE to see a sample of one of our reviews)

I firmly believe in perception based questioning, so a lot of our review elements are based on 1-10 scale questions. Both the direct report and the employee will complete the review prior to the review meeting; the purpose is to clarify both performance, objectives and expectations and make sure they align with the company vision; but more importantly manufacture a frequent point of real communication so introverted people like me don’t keep putting it off.

Which leads me to rule #3…

 

Rule #3: Have a clear vision and values to live by.

I have to admit; over the years I’ve seen so many dusty mission and value statement signs in businesses that I began to brush their usefulness aside. Only recently I have truly begun to understand the significance and how to apply them.

What do you stand for?

Why is it important to you?

If you visualize your company in 3-5 years from today what will have happened?

I now believe this is so critical to success I urge you to stop reading and start writing right now!

Doing this kind of brainstorming activity recently lead me to shift the whole organizational structure of my companies, and the benefits it would bring became so obvious.

But describing your vision in as much detail as possible it will set your mind to begin to rationalize what does that end goal really look like?

From there you will begin to assign the concrete markers like how much revenue you will be generating, how much profit, how many employees you might need, how many customers, the impact you will have made with your product or service.

From there you can begin to work backward to where you are today, what do you need from each member of your team today to begin moving toward your vision? What are the bullet points of their day-to-day tasks? What more do you need to expect from them as you grow? Who are the new people you will need to your organization?

Soon you’ll end up as I did with a great list that will become the “job description” for each position in your organization and likely even a career roadmap for them to follow as they help you build the company illustrated in your vision.

(CLICK HERE to see our Mission, Vision, Values)

(CLICK HERE to see a sample of our Trainer Job Description and Career Path)

 

 


Trainer Job Description and Career Path

Trainer (25-33 hours/week Salary Range $31,000-65,000)

Direct Report: Manager

Position Overview: The Trainer works directly with the clients in a group setting to provide 30 minutes of high intensity circuit training. Our program is designed to be the best 30 minutes of our clients’ day, every day! In addition trainers will provide encouragement, resources, ensure safety, and coaching to a variety of fitness levels on and off the mat.

Expectations

On the Mic Standards (Expectations of the trainer while clients are present)

  • Be the best 30 minutes of our clients day every day!
  • Always exude high energy and run a highly energetic training session
  • Greet, welcome and congratulate people (Preferably by name, expected to learn every single person’s name and use as often as possible.)
  • Effectively demonstrate how to perform various exercises during a group session.
  • Provide corrections as needed and use breaks to further educate clients on biomechanics and how to maximize the benefit of the workout.
  • Always know who’s new, focus, protect and develop the new people.
  • Monitor clients’ progress and continually challenge them to push beyond their current limits.
  • Recognize veterans frequently (gold stars, make them station stars (have people look at what their doing as an example of good form)
  • Develop relationships with all clients, knowing names and what their “why” is for attending bootcamp.
  • Maintain safety at all times
  • Wrap up with praise and acknowledgement
  • Be willing to help people between camps in any way they need (Zen Planner, learning, form, nutrition, modification, etc)
  • Understand and adhere to company core values, leading by example at all times.

 

Off the Mic Standards (Expectations of the trainer when clients are not present)

  • Work with other trainers to design a variety of safe and effective workouts and submit on time. (Test the exercises, are they safe for deconditioned Mrs. Jones? Could a simpler/safer variation/alternative be just as effective?
  • Reset the floor, make sure the workout floor is organized at all times.
  • Tidy up (not just the workout floor, common areas too ex. Bathrooms, lounge, etc)
  • Client follow up (relationships are everything the more we reach out the more compliance we get, the better the results are the more fun this is.)
  • Client assistance (Zenplanner, etc, you need to know how to do just about anything in Zen.)
  • Teardown, vacuum, and setup the new workout.
  • Update/Review whiteboard KPIs weekly.

 

Required Education Training

  • FBBC Certification
  • 48hr Fat Loss training
  • Nationally recognized certification
  • Zen Planner (know all aspects of account management)
  • Sonos/Spotify
  • Skulpt
  • Ongoing continuing education
    • Martin Rooney
    • Alwyn Cosgrove
    • Anatomy
    • Psycho cybernetics
    • Extreme Ownership
    • Delivering happiness

Points of Measurement:

  • Attendance
  • Total Number of Members
  • Cancellation
  • Before and Afters
  • Spot checks (Video review of camps, or direct review by Manager/Director of Operations)
  • Quarterly Review (Including scores from client satisfaction survey)

 

Qualifications/Requirements:

  • Current nationally recognized training certification.
  • Current CPR (First Aid is a bonus)
  • Must be high energy, positive and outgoing all the time!
  • (Preferred) A minimum of 2 years previous training experience is a huge asset.
  • (Preferred) Minimum 2 years post secondary education in a related field.

 

Level 2 Trainers:

  • Exemplify all standards as above
  • Typically have 0-3 years of experience
  • Maintain a strong safety record
  • Workouts always submitted on time.
  • Directly responsible for the regular submission (min 1-2/month/trainer ex. 2 trainers = average 2-4 submissions/month of before and after photos showing substantial change (20+lbs total lost)
  • Receive strong quarterly feedback with 85% or more of client submissions at more than 8 on approval rate.
  • Show regular initiative to award gold stars and take photos.

 

Level 3 Trainers:

  • Maintain a strong safety record
  • Directly responsible for the regular submission (min 1-2/month/trainer ex. 2 trainers = average 2-4 submissions/month of before and after photos showing substantial change (20+lbs total lost)
  • Receive strong quarterly feedback with 85% or more of client submissions at more than 8 on approval rate.
  • Post regularly on company social media.
  • Can be attributed for client referrals on a semi-regular basis (at least 1/month)
  • Is regularly responsible for submitted before and afters (they hand management or directly facilitate submissions for 2-4 before and afters/month)
  • Nurture and foster our online reviews (home location receives 2-6 new reviews/month on places like Google and Facebook page.)
  • Complete all suggested continuing education on time.
  • Demonstrate a willingness to learn and dramatic improvement on related areas of work (ex. Zen Planner knowledge continual improvement.)
  • Make a strong effort to know all client’s names.
  • Always know who’s on a trial and facilitate continuation conversation with them.
  • Become engaged in the community (ex. Member initiatives like grocery store tours, running events that bring new guests to us, getting involved in volunteer/fundraising initiatives.)
  • Regularly responsible for new sales from new trial clients.
  • Show signs of embracing continuing education by completing all suggested reading and new reading they’ve taken initiative to explore.
  • Regularly involved in content generation (articles and videos on various topics)
  • Constantly promoting the studio via personal social media.
  • Is regularly responsible for submitted before and afters (they hand management or directly facilitate submissions for 4+ before and afters/month)
  • Be entirely flexible of schedule and willing to fill in where needed.

Level 4 Trainers:

  • Quarterly volunteer participation.
  • Very active in continuing education (regular event attendance, exploring new certifications, influencing the teams education with what they’ve learned.)
  • Is regularly responsible for submitted before and afters (they hand management or directly facilitate submissions for 6+ before and afters/month)
  • Always exploring and implementing new exercises/burnouts/workout styles to keep things FUN and different for clients
  • Workouts are completed and in the journal before they are due
  • Gold stars handed out at least once per shift
  • Be proactive in helping organize client events or new ideas for theme nights, referral contests, in house mini challenges

 

Level 5 Trainers:

  • Exemplify all standards as above
  • 2+ Years experience minimum
  • Receive regular praise publicly and privately by clients (ex. Endorsements to leadership, on social media publicly or privately.)
  • Have a strong track record for going “above and beyond.” (ex. Could be organizing a volunteer activity, taking initiative to organize a fundraiser, strong track record for assisting clients beyond the gym hours (while maintaining a work/life balance.)
  • Strong track record for continual personal self-development (ex. Regular attendance to industry events, an average of one or more books/month related to any aspect of field.)
  • Seeing regular weekly increases of 10+ net clients in home location.
  • Regularly having weeks/months of minimal attrition (less than 2% of total members in month)
  • Is directly or indirectly responsible for submission of high volume of before and afters. (2-3/week/trainer/location ex. 2 trainers = 8-12 before and afters/month of 20+ lbs lost.)
  • Very active on social media (typically posts gold stars and work related moments 2-3/day on IG and or Facebook.)
  • Active and regularly promoting the studio on personal social media (posting and tagging people in promotions, inviting personal circle of influence to try camps via 3 free/1 week free.)
  • Is directly/indirectly responsible for high amounts of member referrals leading to sign ups (average of 5 signups or 5/10 referrals/trainer/month/location)
  • Knows every client’s name and makes habit to use them frequently.
  • Regularly demonstrates comprehensive knowledge and understanding of all components in training list (ex. Zen planner, etc)
  • Regularly contributes educational content to the mailing list and other audience vehicles.
  • Regularly engages in Facebook live/Instagram Live video educating or promoting the business.

Our Mission, Vision and Values

Mission: We Empower People to Become the Best Versions of Themselves

Vision:

We are committed to having a broad impact on each other and the communities we serve, empowering all those we interact with to “become the best versions of themselves.” We’ll use exercise, nutrition, positivity, change psychology and genuine relationships as our primary tools.

Over the next three years we will impact more than 11,000 new people between our three current locations (South and West Edmonton and Innisfail, AB.) (as measured by the total people in our databases.) We will proudly display multiple new transformations (submitted before and after photos) on a weekly basis, our clients will rave about their success and experiences, being at Fit Body will truly be their most looked forward to time of day!

We will see net growth in our membership in excess of 360 additional clients per year, and each time we exceed this goal we will evaluate our plan for expansion to open our next location to serve even more people in our communities. By the end of 2021 we will be at 6 or more active locations in the region. This will come easily because from the moment anyone opens the door the enthusiasm and positive energy will wave over them from our smiles, our ability to get to know them and call them by name, to them we will just feel like the family we already think og them to be.

Growth will be easy because work isn’t laborious when we’re having fun and our instant reward is the smiles and laughter we share with our clients.

With growth we will continually strive to give back by contributing time, effort and resources to volunteer and charitable organizations in our community. By 2021 our charitable donations will exceed $10,000 annually per location and we will be known for our charitable participation in the communities we serve because that’s who we are, we love to serve and have an impact on people’s lives, life becomes simple when you care bigger because everyone cares about you and encourages you in return!

If we’re successful in what we do change will be more than just a physical change in our clients. It will encompass strong emotional changes pertaining to self-mastery and relationships. Those we impact will knowingly or unknowingly join our mission through their encouragement of others and this is how we will have a profound impact and be “determined difference makers” in our communities!

Values:

Care Bigger

Extreme Ownership

Be Open & Honest

Always Have Fun

Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Focus on What Counts


Sample Trainer Employee Review

Employee Name: __________________________ Date: ______________________

Reviewed by: _____________________________ Review #: ____________________
Mission/Vision/Values
Know the mission statement by heart: Y / N

Able to recite all the company values: Y / N

Which value did you focus on last week and how:

Pick one value to focus on this week (how will you do it?):

Demo:
How do I rate you on a scale of 1/10 and why:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

One thing did well:

One area of improvement to focus on for next week:

Workout:
How do I rate you on a scale of 1/10 and why:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

One thing did well:

One area of improvement to focus on for next week:

Overall Experience (before camp, cooldown, after camp):
How do I rate you on a scale of 1/10 and why:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

One thing did well:

One area of improvement to focus on for next week:

Zen Planner
How do I rate you on a scale of 1/10 and why:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

One thing did well:
What was biggest success of the weak?

What was biggest failure of the weak? (Where could I have been better)

How many gold stars did you award this week? _________

How many times did you check in on FB this week? ____________

How many check ins did we have this week? ______________

Are we up or down in total members this week? (By how many) ________________

How many before and afters, testimonials or reviews (FB and Google) were submitted this week? _________

Goal for next week: ____________________________________________________________

How will you reach this goal?

____________________________________________________________________________

What support do you need from the company?

____________________________________________________________________________

Was assigned reading completed and summary turned in? Y / N

What is assigned for next week? _________________________________________________

One area of improvement to focus on for next week:

____________________________________________________________________________

Additional Comments/Questions:


Do You Overcomplicate?

Do You Overcomplicate?

I had a moment of reflection and clarity today as we are adjusting some of our systems in an effort to simplify. Oftentimes as things get busier in business, they also become more complicated.

You add more ways to attract leads, more emails are coming in, more questions from staff, more questions from clients and before you know it you’re drowning in questions and have no time to answer them all.

Can you relate?

Do you overcomplicate things?

Are there ways that you could simplify your business?

You may ask yourself why should I simplify? The short and fast answer is burnout.

Burnout for you and burnout for each of your staff.

The more your staff have to try to keep up with your ever changing systems, multiple promotions running at the same time and too many tasks the faster they are going to burnout.

Once your staff reach the point of burnout and exhaustion they become less productive and less happy. This will overflow into your business as clients pick up on the burnout and exhaustion.

Clients start slipping through all the cracks in your complicated systems and all those people you could have helped, are gone to the gym down the road.

I don’t know about you, but that frustrates me.

Knowing I could have helped someone. Knowing I could have changed someone’s life, but I didn’t because we didn’t follow up in time. Or even worse, we didn’t follow up at all.

How do you fix it?

First you make 3 lists:

List 1 – Mandatory – What are the mandatory things that have to be done each day. These are the things that are essential to your business. Be strict about what makes it onto this list.

List 2 – Optional but Important – What are the things that you choose to do each day that aren’t necessary to stay operational but important to your growth.

List 3 – Redundant – What are the things that you or your staff are wasting time doing each day?

Next you make an action plan.

How do you make things on the mandatory list more efficient? Can you change the way you do things to make them simpler for yourself and your staff?

How do you delegate the optional but important tasks to someone who will be excited to do them? Each one of your staff members is great at something, use their strengths for these optional but important tasks.

How do you eliminate the redundant list? If you can’t eliminate things on the redundant list how you do at least simplify them so you cut down the time spent on those items?

Systems must be in place for your business to operate smoothly, efficiently and consistently.

If you could find a way to simplify your systems, prevent burnout, accomplish more work in less time and have happy healthy staff who are excited to work each day, doesn’t that sound great?

Make your lists, make an action plan, ask for help or advice and implement. Those are the first 4 steps to simplifying your business and your life.


By Jennifer Byrne – Operations and Regional Manager for all my Fit Body Boot Camp locations.

I came to the fitness industry after my own weight loss journey. After losing over 100 lbs on my own with just a few changes to mindset, nutrition and adding regular exercise I made a decision that I wanted to inspire others to make a change.

With a career change, and a mentor willing to take a chance on me (and a stubborn attitude) I’m now helping hundreds of people make lasting changes every day at South Edmonton Fit Body Boot Camp.Cabel refers to me as his “operations expert” as I work closely with him managing the day-to-day at not just my location but his three current active locations. At any given time we have 15 staff, hundreds of new leads, hundreds of clients and a vibrant culture that spans two cities and 150 miles!

Cabel always tells me that it’s my fearless approach to jumping in and testing something new that has helped him rapidly test and implement new ideas, he then turns to me to clean up the “in the trenches” logistics so we can duplicate and teach our other teams.

I’m excited to share what I’ve learned with all of you and I know with Cabel’s crazy ideas I can help make it easy for you to implement them today!



The 4 Pillars of a Fitness Business

I learned the hard way that as an entrepreneur you get pulled in a thousand directions every day and you are forced to wear a lot of hats.

At least for me, burnout was an ongoing problem.

It took me way to long to learn that not everything was urgent, and that by letting some things slide and focusing intensely on just a few things; not only did things not fall apart they began to rapidly improve.

But how do you know where to focus?

How do you know what you can let slide?

Like it might surprise you but in my opinion customer service isn’t an area of focus until much later. Don’t confuse that to believe that I don’t think customer service is important, but rather the best customer service will come from developing other areas first.

You’ll understand better when you watch the video.

Bottom line is, we can do a few things really well, and if you give just a few things at a time the majority of your attention you’ll find your business will not only grow it’s going to work and grow without you. (It’s why I could open two new facilities within 30 days of one another and never visit them again since they’ve opened.)

Enjoy.

What do you think? Did this video give you some ideas?

One of the things I’ve found is; that it’s easy to keep gathering information, it can be a pretty scary thing to actually go out and do it.

Something that seemed so simple suddenly becomes scary, or a lot more complicated.

Our industry is built on the fact that as people, as human beings, we need each other; we need support, community, confidence and accountability.

I love helping people, I love helping fitness professionals help more people, maybe I can help you.

From time to time I take on a few private coaching clients, if after watching the video above, if you’re serious about taking big action in your business maybe I can help you. Quite often I help fitness pros add $5000, 10,000, $15,000 a month in additional revenue in 60-90 days. If you’d like to know more about private coaching send me a message here.


How I Would “Start Over” in 2017

I get asked this question a lot…

How would you start a successful fitness business if you were just starting over.

Not how I would start one today with all the resources now at my disposal, but to rewind the clock and with all the knowledge (from all the painful mistakes I’ve made) how would I start out today (currently 2017) with limited resources?

The good news is, it’s cheaper and easier than ever. You have so much direct control over things that we never used to have, you can control expenses better than ever before and new customers are just a few clicks away!

In this video I share with your some of my thoughts of exactly how I would do it, I hope this gives you some direction.

What do you think? Did this video give you some ideas?

One of the things I’ve found is; that it’s easy to keep gathering information, it can be a pretty scary thing to actually go out and do it.

Something that seemed so simple suddenly becomes scary, or a lot more complicated.

Our industry is built on the fact that as people, as human beings, we need each other; we need support, community, confidence and accountability.

I love helping people, I love helping fitness professionals help more people, maybe I can help you.

From time to time I take on a few private coaching clients, if after watching the video above, if you’re serious about taking big action in your business maybe I can help you. Quite often I help fitness pros add $5000, 10,000, $15,000 a month in additional revenue in 60-90 days. If you’d like to know more about private coaching send me a message here.