Entrepreneurship

The Dream Team!

Managing and Leading a High Performance Team in 2018

Published by on June 6, 2018 | Leave a response

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)

 

 

Posted in , ,

Trainer Job Description and Career Path

Published by on June 5, 2018 | Leave a response

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.
Posted in , ,

Our Mission, Vision and Values

Published by on June 5, 2018 | Leave a response

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

Posted in , ,

Sample Trainer Employee Review

Published by on June 5, 2018 | Leave a response

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:

Posted in , ,

The 4 Pillars of a Fitness Business

Published by on February 15, 2017 | Leave a response

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.

Posted in , ,

How I Would “Start Over” in 2017

Published by on February 13, 2017 | 1 Response

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.

Posted in , , ,

How We Went From Being a “Gym” to Being a “Community”

Published by on January 24, 2017 | Leave a response

Competition is fierce these days, having a strong point of differentiation is continually growing to be more difficult. Our approach is simple, help our clients develop such strong relationships not only with us but with one another that they never want to leave!

This isn’t as difficult as you think, this video will explain some of the systematic practices that have helped us do this (and some just so happen to really enhance your online authority and make all of your digital marketing efforts work better!)

Posted in , , , Tagged ,

How-to Hire Only Highly Motivated Employees – Part 2

Published by on January 24, 2017 | Leave a response

Here’s the second half of a hiring webinar I did for my private coaching clients. The two parts cover our specific process from how we write our recruiting ads, to interviewing practices, special testing, internships and ultimately hiring and training manual creation (our training requires very few man hours to get someone ready for their position.)

I’ve hired a lot of the wrong people over the years leading to this practice to ensure we only find the most compatible team members for our growing team.

Posted in ,

How-to Hire Only Highly Motivated Employees – Part 1

Published by on January 24, 2017 | Leave a response

Here’s a recent webinar I did on our hiring practices. I’ve hired a lot of the wrong people over the years; which lead to reading a lot of books, working with consultants, talking to other entrepreneurs to find a good vetting process that has worked for us.

Bottom line I believe in hiring the right person first, the right skills come second, I hold honesty, loyalty, and desire to win above all.

Here’s Part 1 of 2 webinars on our specific hiring practices, I hope this helps you!

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/OeKeD48ElHU?rel=0″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

Posted in ,
Jon was an amazing still model for this sunrise long exposure in Banff National Park.

What 3 Photographers Taught Me About Entrepreneurship

Published by on November 8, 2016 | Leave a response

This weekend I got to explore my creative side in the Canadian Rockies. To me Banff National Park is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Jon was an amazing still model for this sunrise long exposure in Banff National Park.

Jon was an amazing still model for this sunrise long exposure in Banff National Park.

My wife was so kind to book me this four-day photo excursion with three amazing and well-known landscape and wildlife photographers. I knew I was going to experience the perfect stress relief before our new baby arrives in December (and after opening a new boot camp location just 3 weeks ago with the next set to open in 2 more weeks from today;) but what I didn’t expect was interesting validation to the entrepreneurial concepts that I teach so many of you.

In Saturday night’s fireside chat I was shocked to hear that so many of the 29 other participants had many questions about the business of photography and what these three individuals did that allowed them to attain a high level of success in their beloved field.

I think you will find the key takeaways both familiar and highly applicable to your fitness business so I wanted to share.

1) Services comprise the largest portion of their earnings.

This was and wasn’t a shock to me. In my own aspirations as a hobbyist fine art photographer I’ve been very focused on working through how to achieve greater distribution of my art through prints. In the fitness business I’ve seen so many people try to focus on selling products at the expense of energy that could be applied to ramping up the value of their service. The bottom line is; when you are good at something people want to buy YOU, they want to live vicariously through you; they want to learn from you. This is your greatest commodity, don’t undervalue it and be sure to embrace it.

2) Fear will hold you back in the beginning (and then in the middle, and then again later and throughout.)

This was such an amazing validation and affirmation of one of life’s greatest career lessons. When you start anything, the thing that will hold you back the most is your own fear. Don’t be afraid to just put it out to the world. It doesn’t matter if it’s art, boot camp or personal training services, the point is some people may not like it and that’s just ok because there will be enough that will; as long as you have the courage to keep sharing it.

3) Consistency

Decide on a schedule and commit to it! In this case they were discussing the importance of nurturing your audience both on and offline with consistent content. People fall into patterns, consistency creates expectation, and expectation creates reciprocity and opportunity. Their suggestion for photography was to decide on a schedule you can commit to, maybe that’s just once a week to release an image that you feel reflects the best of your current ability and then commit to that.

This advice is directly transferable to your fitness training business (or likely almost any business.) We are in a content driven world, people consume more content faster than ever, and more and more people are producing great content. In order to be heard amidst the noise you need to solidify your voice. Don’t worry if you don’t immediately have a large subscriber base just continue to be consistent. Make sure your voice and opinions are consistent (take the time to prepare your best work, without delaying for perfection,) continue to convey a similar message and give people an opportunity to connect and feel something which leads me to the next point.

4) It doesn’t work without passion and drive.

I’m sorry but if you don’t care more about “what” or “why” you are doing something then “how much” you’ll make from it you’ll never experience what it’s like to be the most successful at anything.

You have to be in touch with your why; everything you do relating to your business (or your hobbies for the matter) should be intentional. It should create deep emotional connection and leave you with a greater sense of fulfillment. We all need money to be able to buy freedom to do more of what we want, but why not do what you want to make the money you need?

If you question your passion from time to time that’s normal (see #2) and it’s in those moments that you are often about take your greatest steps; my advice to you is when that happens sit down for 15 minutes and write out your “why” in a notebook and then attack the problem that has made you afraid. (For me this is actually a daily activity, the first 10 minutes of every day.)

What an amazing night celebrating 11 years and last anniversary as a family of two!

What an amazing night celebrating 11 years and last anniversary as a family of two!

5) Commitment and success out of necessity.

If you truly love something, if you truly want to be successful there’s no greater truth than: a part time commitment will generate part time results.

I think the best example of this is network marketing. The 99% become enamoured with the 1% that make 99% of the money. They buy in to the idea that they can “do it one the side.” The never acknowledge that doing it on the side means they just fit it in when they feel like and as such never really overcome their fears. Never doing anything with consistent effort and activity, and as such become more fearful and frustrated as to why their results are not as good as others.

At some point, if this is your passion, you have to “burn the ships” and make success a necessity. When your only option is to succeed you will always rise to the occasion and find a way, and this is truly the lesson that earns you a masters degree in entrepreneurship. Don’t take haphazard chances, do your due diligence but then commit fully and make success your only option.

Over more than 22 years in fitness these lessons have become guiding principles for me.

Sure there are all kinds of technical things to learn but without the above I can tell you they just don’t matter.

It was truly heart warming to see these rules apply in the business of photography as well; in fact I bet they are somewhat universal truths.

If I might add just one more before I wrap up.

Do what you love but make time to love new things.

I love being an entrepreneur, I care more about helping people than making money, but not all days are rosy. Many have required more work, frustration and suffering than I would ever have liked, and the balance comes in being able to step away from it for a time.

Moving locations on a snowy hillside near Peyto Lake

Moving locations on a snowy hillside near Peyto Lake

Photography has become one of those outlets for me, my guiding principles are still they same, but the medium is different. I can apply my same focus to helping people by creating something of beauty, allowing them to see the world in a way they’d otherwise miss, giving them an opportunity to feel something and tell a story, and the best part is my entrepreneurship has given me the freedom to explore and separate myself from the fears, frustrations and challenges that I know we all feel. Enrich your life, pour your heart into your business but when you can, save a little bit for something else, you won’t be disappointed.

Oh and if you ever want to take an amazing photo workshop be sure to check these guys out:

John E. Marriott

Dave Brosha

Paul Zizka

There’s nothing better than new experiences with humble and like-minded people.

#makeyourmoment

Posted in , , , Tagged ,