Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Most fitness businesses suck, but most coaches are pretty good. I know this because I lived it. My business systems were a two out of 10. My coaching was about a seven. After I improved my business systems to an eight, I needed to improve my coaching, but I didn’t know how. This is a common problem in gyms all over the world. How do you systematically improve your product? And the answer isn’t just “get more credentials.” Today I’ve got Oskar Johed here, and he’s going to give us the real answer. My name is Mike Warkentin. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Please hit “subscribe” so you don’t miss a single episode. Now, Oskar owns CrossFit Medis and CrossFit Sickla in Sweden. He’s also on CrossFit’s Level 1 Seminar Staff. Coaching is one of his passions. His gym has more CrossFit Level 3 trainers than any other in Sweden and maybe even in the world at this point. His gym does over a million dollars in revenue just by focusing on basics and delivering amazing service. So, Oskar’s going to help us systematically improve coaching. Welcome Oskar from Sweden. How are you?
Oskar Johed (00:57):
I’m good. Thank you, Mike, for that introduction.
Mike Warkentin (00:59):
Yeah, you’re very welcome. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you, especially about something that you are very passionate about. So, I’m going to dig in here, and let’s help some people fix their coaches. So, talk to me about a gym’s product. What is the main thing that we are selling?
Oskar Johed (01:11):
Coaching, like results. We can talk about self-actualization and stress and pain relief and dream fulfillment and all this stuff. But at the end of the day, we sell results. That’s what we deliver, and that mostly is linked to aesthetics and maybe some performance and weight loss. But we sell coaching to improve people’s fitness, and then we know there are cascading effects of that that can be psychological and emotional and spiritual for that matter. But at the end of the day, I think we sell coaching, and some people might talk about the care and empathy and compassion. Sure, but honestly, I think if someone’s yelling at me and called me weird names, but still got me really close to my results, I’d probably take that. So, I think coaching is about giving people results.
Mike Warkentin (02:06):
You sell, as a gym owner, results that are generated through coaching. You don’t sell community. You don’t sell clean bathrooms. You don’t sell reverse hypers and cool air bikes and all that stuff. That stuff can be in your gym, but you don’t sell it. You are selling results through coaching, so think about that. Some people—I made this mistake—I thought I was selling community. I’m not; I’m selling results. So, Oskar, when is a time to focus on a gym’s product? Like I focused on it at the wrong time when I was losing $5,000 a month, and I’m like, “I’ll improve my coaching, and everything will get better.” That didn’t happen. So when should a gym focus on coaching?
Oskar Johed (02:39):
Well, I think it kind of depends. See, two things come to my mind. One is obviously if you are the owner who runs the gym by yourself, and now you’re going to start offloading some of the tasks to your team, then probably you should start focusing on coaching before you fully step away from the dance floor. Because there’s got to be a pretty big discrepancy between the care and the quality of coaching from the owner, and when you start filling in part-time trainers or even full-time trainers. So, in order to make sure that transition is as smooth as possible, you probably have to start doing that before the owner coaches the Friday evening class, and then Monday comes a complete newbie, and it’s going to be a huge discrepancy of the product.
Oskar Johed (03:25):
That’s going to be unfortunate. It’s going to be a necessary hole to dig yourself. But from a more general perspective, I think that it is the product that we sell, but you should probably focus more on that right before it is no longer your strongest spinning plate. You obviously want to make your coaching better, your product better, be also better at sales. You need to be better at marketing, better at average staff development. You need to be better at managing your time. You need to be better at building relationships, taking care of yourself, all that stuff, right? So, there’s so many things that we could potentially focus on, but since it is the number one product, it’s the one thing we sell. So, when you think that your sales is better objectively, then probably you need to focus on that.
Oskar Johed (04:17):
Because at the end of the day, at least according to me and what I’ve seen over the years, is it is the product. Like you coach people to get results, and it doesn’t really matter how nice the bathrooms are. People will not sign up if the bathrooms are dirty. We know that for sure and all the other things, but at the end of the day, people want results. So, when something gets better, when something gets noticeably better, then I think that it’s time to maybe start focusing on that. And to your point, if we go back 10 years or so, coaching was pretty decent because at least in the semi-CrossFit space, people were, the owners were pretty excited about coaching. They got really good, maybe seven, maybe eight, maybe even nine out of 10.
Oskar Johed (05:00):
But they didn’t really focus on the business. And when the heyday of CrossFit was kind of over in a sense, you had to focus on the business stuff. And now a lot of people fix the business stuff with the resources and what we can provide in Two-Brain. So, the operations of the business, the behind the scenes so to say, might be six, seven, and eight, but now the product is not there anymore. And then it doesn’t really matter how good your sales are if you’re losing people, because, once again, results are going to give retention. That’s going to bring a thriving community. Because people are fit, people are happy, people get results, but the product is really important. So, I’d say make sure—right before something gets better is probably when you should focus on the product.
Mike Warkentin (05:40):
Yeah. And I can name maybe off the top of my head a dozen amazing coaches. These were top level coaches who don’t coach anymore because their businesses were bad just like mine was bad. They’re gone. So, the coaching space has lost these leading lights, and these were great, great trainers because they weren’t able to run a business. So, what Chris Cooper’s talked about is that passionate coaches, we want to coach people, and we kind of end up opening gyms on the side often. So, the coaching’s pretty good, but the business aspect is horrific. Once you get the business plate that’s wobbling to spin really nicely, then you start looking over at your coaching, you’re like, “I haven’t addressed that in a while.” Now it’s time to get it. So, I’d say in agreement with you, Oskar, when your business is stable and things are going pretty well on the other side, meaning your operations are good, your staffing’s good, your systems, business, sales, marketing, retention, all that stuff is going pretty well, start looking at your product again.
Mike Warkentin (06:32):
Then you can really focus on that. Because if your product is great and your business systems suck, you can go out of business. That will happen. So, let’s talk about this now. What is—like you’re looking to improve your product. What are the first steps to doing so? How do you ensure that this process is simple, focused and effective? Because a lot of people are just like, “We need to make our coaching better. Try harder and maybe get another credential.” Like that’s not the answer. What is?
Oskar Johed (06:54):
Get an awesome business partner who takes care of a lot of the hiring. Because I think you can avoid a lot of problems by hiring the right people, right? And in my case, Karl, we’ve been doing this together now for 10 years, and he’s, at least for the last three years, he’s been really hard on hiring coaches. That’s been his side of the business, and he’s been doing a really good job there and making sure we hire the right people. It’s got to be very hard to eventually get people to really want to outperform themselves every single time to step on a dance floor, be compassionate, ask another question, make sure they pick up the trash, maybe spend two more minutes at looking up a progression for the class for someone who has an injured leg or something. And that’s so much easier if you have the right people you can mold from the start, so to say. So hiring is obviously something we should be better at.
Mike Warkentin (07:44):
I’m going to ask you this. Coop has said this: Hire for personality, and train for skill. Do you do that?
Oskar Johed (07:49):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Like, all our trainers, we got—currently we have nine individuals who have passed a Level 3. We can talk about that separately about credentials and all that stuff if needed. But three of us have made it to CrossFit Seminar Staff. And I think one of us maybe has some kind of degree in—like no one has a university degree in strength and conditioning. We are all just—
Mike Warkentin (08:12):
Oh, you’re a banker.
Oskar Johed (08:13):
Right, bankers and average people who got pretty good at one thing here because we cared about it. So that is something I wholeheartedly agree with. Now it’s very hard—like, you know that in the beginning, if anyone can alleviate the pressure of you having to coach every morning, every lunch and every evening, you can take anyone who can not mess it up worse than no one, right?
Mike Warkentin (08:34):
Yeah, you’re awake and breathing.
Oskar Johed (08:36):
Right? And if they can smile, that’s even better, right? So, in the beginning you obviously take whatever so you can spend some time with your family or take care of yourself. So, you kind of have some people in your organization you have to deal with. But going forward, I think the number one thing is to make sure you hire the right people for what you’re looking for. We can talk about credentials again, but whatever you’re looking for in your organization, that’s what you should hire for, right? Now when you have people there, you should obviously focus on the lowest hanging fruits because we’ve talked about previously, like there’s going to be spinning plates everywhere. There are going to be fires burning, and you have to let some fires burn. And then they have the whole like, “Hey, what’s important, what’s urgent?”
Oskar Johed (09:16):
But if you look at how can you get some quick wins, and I think if I just look at if you have—I talked about this at the Summit—if you have a newer coach and intermediate and a more seasoned coach, like three avatars or so, we actually have more steps. But if you have like a junior, mid and then experienced—if you were a newbie, just make it fun. Because if someone just gave you the keys like, “Hey, here’s the shirt. Go and coach your class now,” you’re going to be a deer in headlights. You’re going to be super intimidated, and you’re going to be quiet, right? And so, you need confidence, and confidence is going to come with experience, but if you genuinely believe in what you’re doing as an organization, you are going to be more confident.
Oskar Johed (09:58):
So if you’re a new coach, if you just make it fun, I think that’s going to improve the product short-term pretty quickly. If you are a more seasoned coach or senior coach, experienced coach, like they’ve been doing it for a while, if you just decide to focus on one thing—after you listen to this podcast and you’re like, “You know what? Today we’re going to be doing the power cleans. I’m going to teach one thing in the power clean. I’m going to look for one thing. And again, I’ll try to correct it or acknowledge improvements here.” We can look at 20 different things in every single movement, which is quite a lot, and then different individuals respond differently. But if you decide, “Hey, today I’m just going to focus on this one thing. I’m going to address this. I’m going to be looking for that one.”
Oskar Johed (10:42):
And that’s the one thing I’m going to have cues for so I can correct them. That’s going to make me—because I know what to look for and I know what to say if I don’t see it, and if I see it, I’m going to say, “Good job.” Because at the end of the day, as a trainer, my job is to honestly be able to say, “Hey Mike, that’s better.” That’s better in terms of reducing the risk of injury or improving your performance or in effort. “Hey, I know even if I looked at the recording, that one did not look any better than the previous one, but I can damn sure tell that you’re trying. So, hey, good job on trying.” Right? Because then you go, “Dude, I’m going to the Olympics or the CrossFit Games pretty soon,” right? Because that’s what we’re looking for.
Oskar Johed (11:20):
You then objectively made the product better. Because you feel, or we can see a noticeable change in your performance. So just focus on one thing and consistently do that. And then you can start adding two things maybe per movement and three and four and five, and all of a sudden, everything’s better. And then as a group, what you could do that we do: This month, focus on one thing. “Hey team, just make sure that the whiteboard brief is no longer than four minutes. No one came for this lecture. So hey, let’s just—” and Karl did this in maybe, let’s say, March or April. Hey, he recorded a 10 out of 10 whiteboard brief. Like “This is the workout. This is the what, this is the how and this is the why.”
Oskar Johed (12:04):
“And then check for injuries and demo the movements. Done in two minutes and 20 seconds.” And if you’re a complete newbie, you can just say, “We’re doing five by five back squat. This is a back squat. It looks like this, and we’re doing it to get stronger.” And more seasoned trainers can talk about energy systems or how you’re going to have maybe some improving weight and then you’re going to like—are we going to do straight sets or undulate or whatever? But just like, this is what we focus on with everyone this month. Next month, you might be focused on, “Hey team, just make sure that no one stands around listening for more than one minute after the workout has started or the session has started.” Or “Let’s just focus on making it fun. So hey, prepare a few ridiculous jokes or have a question you ask everyone during whiteboard. Hey, who’s your favorite superhero?” Or something that we can all agree on, so we do something consistently to bring up the consistency in the product. Does that make sense?
Mike Warkentin (13:02):
Yeah. And I’m going to point this out for listeners in case you missed it. Oskar is focused. He’s recommending you improve one thing, make sure it’s better, then hit the next thing. You can’t just say, “I’m going to improve every single aspect of coaching all at once. I’m going to make you see, correct, whiteboard brief, everything, remember people’s names.” It’s frazzled; it doesn’t work. You need to focus on small aspects of improvement and incrementally improve things over time with focus. So, Oskar gave a great example: “This month, we’re working on better whiteboard briefs,” and there are different levels within his system for beginner and expert coaches. But the point is “We’re doing a short brief, we’re explaining why we’re doing the workout, we’re demoing the movement, and then we’re getting moving,”—something like that, right? An area of focus. The other thing you said that I’ll reiterate, hire the right people.
Mike Warkentin (13:51):
It’s tough to do this sometimes because you’re frazzled and frantic and you can’t figure out “How am I going to see my kids today?” You hire anyone; you put them in place. Not maybe the best plan. You might have to do it at the beginning, but the better plan is to find the right person, and it’s personality first. Does this person want to learn? Is this person passionate? Is this person likable? That’s a huge one. But because if you hire a really skilled jerk, your product is not going to improve. Hire a likable, passionate, teachable person who you can mentor to success, integrate them in your business, let them know your vision and so on and so forth, and then you’re going to have focus on improving them. So, Oskar, I’ve got to ask you this now because you’ve laid out the focus for these things. You’ve talked about hiring the right people. You hire a person now; how do you ensure—like what is your system for ensuring that these people regularly get points of performance and improvement? Like, do you evaluate them regularly? What do you do to make sure they’re moving from here to there?
Oskar Johed (14:44):
Yeah, so we’ve laid out a pretty extensive culture journey that starts well before someone becomes say—so before you put on your coach’s shirt, you have gone through our internal training, which is, we call it “Coach Basic Training,” where you look, in our case, it’s some material from the Level 1, some Level 2 stuff, some—it’s an advanced version of the Advanced Theory Course that most people run in Two-Brain. So, we kind of mix a bit of—we actually made an online course. So, we have modules, so they can just log in, and they can answer some questions about what we do. Yeah, because Karl did all of this by hand in the beginning; that was great, but right now we might have like 30 people in our system, and the cool thing now is that we have, it’s just an open funnel.
Oskar Johed (15:35):
So Mike, if you want to become a coach at our gym, in the past we had to sit down and interview you. What Karl’s done brilliantly is that he will send you a link. First, it’s actually going to ask you to record a session of a three-to-five-minute video on, “These are our values. We fundamentally want to improve the health and quality of life of our members and their families. How does that resonate to you? Why do you want to be a coach? Send us a video,” and if that one is not like an eight or nine out of 10, we’re just going to say bye.
Mike Warkentin (16:02):
That’s personality right there. You’re screening for personality.
Oskar Johed (16:05):
Yeah, and obviously everyone could make something up, but that’s perfectly fine. But then we send you a link, and you start going through some modules on what we believe is fundamental basic understanding of CrossFit. If you are a strength and conditioning coach, you don’t have CrossFit, or if you’re a member that’s coming up through the ranks, you might know the application of CrossFit because you’ve been a member of ours, but you don’t really understand the theory behind it, so we created modules where we go through what we are—like a very, very, very condensed slim down version of the L1 in like 15-minute chunks, like super small, right? Take some quizzes, and then after they’ve completed that, then we sit in. So, you might be coaching, and I have a newbie coach; we’ll sit in and watch you run a class, and I will explain to that person what you’re doing and what you’re doing well and maybe what you aren’t doing so well, what you should be doing, because— And then, after maybe one or two times, we then make sure that the newbie coach might be doing the general warmup, and then they’re walking right by you.
Oskar Johed (17:10):
So we gradually increase—if they’re doing well—gradually increase the responsibility they can take. So, then a more seasoned trainer—it used to be Karl, and he was not burned out, but he was all over the place doing this—so, if you’re a seasoned trainer at our gym, you can then mentor someone here, and then they might start doing the general warm up a few times, and then when that’s good enough, based on our criteria that we’ve written out and you giving feedback after each session—“Hey, you were moving well. You’ve got to be louder. You need to make it fun. Use more names. But the thing you got feedback on the last time, that was a huge improvement. Now you need to make sure you mention people by name, and you can’t be quiet.” So, and then if I coach that person next time, I know that feedback.
Oskar Johed (17:54):
“So, hey, I heard you aced the first part, but today you’re going to focus on names and being louder. Do you have a strategy for that?” I’m like, “Yes.” “Cool.” And then if I give feedback on that and when they pass the basics, they maybe get to the next step, which means a specific thing, and then the full workout, and then they do the entire session. And then when that is good enough, they then have the right to become a coach. In our case they have to have the Level 1 as well, and then we can put them out on the dance floor. What we saw in the spring, because we onboarded quite a few new coaches is that it’s very important for us to start on time and finish on time, right? Because our members are very, very, busy. So, for us, that’s a promise we’ve made. Like I know gyms that were more fluent, so to say, in—
Mike Warkentin (18:44):
I can’t stand it.
Oskar Johed (18:46):
No. Hey, and I understand, but that’s our promise. And some coaches, that’s fine, but for us, we said, “You know what? We’re going to start and finish on time because we know your life is very busy.” So, in the beginning they were really adamant of making sure of that, so they lost the fun. And they spent so much time focusing on the clock, so they kind of, they did some of the coaching and teaching part, but forgot the coaching, which is more about the seeing and correcting and that. So, what we do now is that your first 10 sessions, you’re going to be an assistant coach. So, all you do is just walk around and make sure you—pretty much on one thing. Like in the power clean today, I’m going to look at hip extension.
Oskar Johed (19:23):
I’m going to be looking at—if I see something that’s ridiculous or unsafe, of course you’re going to fix it, and you are free to fix something else, but you’re going to fix one thing per movement that you’ve talked with this more senior coach about who runs the class, and you’re just going to run around as an assistant coach and see and correct, so you get really comfortable at walking up to someone, “Hey Mike, shoulders back. Good job.” “Thank you.” “No, that’s not the shoulders. That’s your knees. Shoulders are there,” right? So, for about 10 sessions, you just want them to run around and get comfortable to get in someone’s face and say, “Good job. I genuinely mean it,” or “Hey, you need to work harder or do x, y, z.” And then maybe after 10 sessions, they can run the class by themself. Then, that’s when they’re like—now starts the fun part. Now, we are probably going to do weekly evaluations with them.
Mike Warkentin (20:11):
Wait, so you don’t just cut your new coaches loose in the gym and never evaluate them ever again? Because I did that.
Oskar Johed (20:17):
Well, that would’ve never happened in the past ever at our gym.
Mike Warkentin (20:26):
It’s so common though. It’s so common. You just—you’re desperate, so you put these people in place, and you’re like, “Godspeed, my friend. Coach the snatch. I’m out.” And then all of a sudden, everything goes wrong. So, you’ve documented, you have a progression for getting people into the gym, you have an elite-level progression where you’ve got everything documented in online modules, but then you’re actually going to evaluate and mentor these people after they become coaches.
Oskar Johed (20:46):
Oh yeah. So yes. Because with our product right now, our coaching is—I can confidently say to the clientele that we have, “Our coaching is almost too good.” So, when we have newer coaches who come in, they’ve been going through maybe six months of training before they get to step foot on the dance floor as a responsible trainer for that session. So, most of these trainers are far more experienced and better at the craft than a lot of the trainers that I see on the L2. But because of the standard that we have of really senior good trainers, there’s still a huge discrepancy. Our members are very patient, but if they’re not improving quick enough, we will hear about it. So, we’ve made our product almost too good, but we want to continue that. So, what we do is we’ve written down expectations per level.
Oskar Johed (21:41):
So we have seven levels from, let’s say six from when you’re like a coach, high five. You just hatched; you coached your first session. We only expect you pretty much by yourself—it’s going to be like, “Hey, start on time; finish on time. Make it fun; have fun. Make it as safe as possible,” right? That’s the only thing we ask for. When you run your first five or so sessions, when you’ve done that, maybe by sessions five or six to 10, start using names. Like when you teach something, you’re going to name it and show it. Like you don’t have to do anything more than that. We don’t expect you to have a refined eye on what you’re looking for. If you just go, “Hey, this is a power clean. It looks like this. Now do it,” that’s fine for maybe a few sessions, maybe two more weeks; then we might evaluate you again.
Oskar Johed (22:27):
OK, now you’ve taught the power clean. What would be one thing you want them to focus on today? “Well, hip extension.” Cool. Focus on hip extension. So, if you focus on hip extension and you teach it, maybe you should have a strategy to correct that, and you know what to look for. Yes. OK, so then you look for that. So, and that’s for teaching and seeing and correcting. And then you have the same—like if you look at something like presence and attitude, like we might just expect them to make it fun and have fun for the first few sessions; then you start layering the complexity by adding names. But eventually, when you’re a super elite level ninja, we want you to build meaningful relationships in class without stopping people and sitting down and drinking coffee, right?
Oskar Johed (23:11):
So even though you might only have a 20-second conversation with someone while you’re correcting their hip extension, you should still be cognizant enough to ask about how their day went, maybe how their kid is doing in school because last time we spoke they were struggling somewhat, and how’s the new job going—without taking away from the product. So obviously that’s far more than we can expect from a complete beginner. But there’s natural progression here that we have written out for everything. So, Karl has made a gargantuan job of like, “These are the bare minimum stuff, and this is what you have to do before you get to be on the dance floor. And now cool, awesome, high five, but now we want to get you here. Within like two and a half years now, you should be a CrossFit Level 3 trainer.”
Oskar Johed (23:55):
“These are the steps you’ve got to take.” So, when we hire people now, we can say, “This is—you are here now. We want all of this from you in the future. If you’re not willing to invest the time and be mentored by us, that is perfectly fine. But we expect you to do this because that’s what we genuinely believe is important to keep the product or the quality of it to the standard that we have made a promise to our clients about.” So, it’s very detailed, and Carl has made an enormous job in the last, I’d say probably 24/7 in the last three months or so.
Mike Warkentin (24:31):
So listeners, what you just heard here is an elite-level plan to improve your product at your gym. I’m going to boil it down for you in case you are not quite at this level. You may not have a Karl at your gym who can do all this stuff for you. Here’s how you do it. And Karl’s very rare, and this is a very top-level plan. What you need is regular evaluations. You cannot just set people loose and assume everything is going to improve on its own. You must evaluate your coaches regularly. Chris Cooper has recommended three every three or four months, six months, twice a year is better than no times a year, right? Do put a regular evaluation system in place. OK? So, that’s your first thing. The second thing: You need to be able to evaluate. You need an evaluation system. Chris has recommended writing down 10 different things that are essential for a great coach, ranking your coaches out of 10, and starting there.
Mike Warkentin (25:18):
The next thing you can assign—Oskar was big on this—focus. You can’t improve everything. Give them an area of focus. “We want to improve. This is your worst metric. It’s seeing and correcting or whatever it might be. We’re going to improve this, and we’re going to improve this at the next thing. Here are some resources for you. At the next evaluation, we’re going to talk about it.” If you do this stuff, you are going to get your coaches, they’re going to start improving. But you have to have these elements. You can’t cut them loose. You have to evaluate them methodically and systematically. That means you can’t just sit in your office and be like, “Ah, pretty good.” “No, you are a seven out of 10 in personality. You need to work on that and start being more engaging, using members’ names.”
Mike Warkentin (25:58):
Give them some numbers, document your starting point scientifically, and then give them resources; mentor them to get to the next level. Then check in with them. That process is exactly what Oskar’s doing. But you can do it at a very, very simple level. You might just have five things on your checklist to start. And like Oskar said, for you it might be show up on time, start the class on time, keep the whiteboard brief under four minutes, give the reason for the workout, use some people’s names, and improve one technical thing. Whatever system you have, make sure it’s there. Evaluate people regularly; mentor them to success. If you do that, you’re going to have a much better product. I’m going to ask you this, Oskar: Do credentials matter?
Oskar Johed (26:39):
In some contexts I think they do. Like I know the CrossFit space well, so in order to coach at a CrossFit gym, you do need a Level 1 or higher to be on the dance floor. So that’s because of the licensing agreement that you’ve signed. And there might be other franchise models or where like the compliance side of it, you might need it.
Mike Warkentin (27:02):
There are some insurance requirements. Sure.
Oskar Johed (27:04):
Sure. Yeah. That aside, credentials might not matter, but the pursuit of it does, I think.
Mike Warkentin (27:12):
So that’s an important distinction. Yeah, I get you.
Oskar Johed (27:14):
Because I’m intimately familiar with the Level 3 exam. It’s an exam that’s 160 questions. You sit down in front of a computer for four hours, and then I think it’s like A, B, C, and D. So, theoretically you could go in there and just go “ABACADABA, A, B, B,” and then you might pass it, right? And then you have the credential on the wall. Would that make you a better CrossFit trainer? Of course not. Everyone can understand that. But what I’ve seen if I look at our trainers, and when I went through that in 2017, is that I did it not because I wanted the credential on the wall; I just knew that someone said, “Hey, you should know all of this. If you know all of this and can apply it in the context that I’m in, that would earn you the right to call yourself this.”
Oskar Johed (27:59):
OK, sweet. And someone’s laid out what I need to know; let’s get after it. And personally, it would not make any sense to spend like six months, four hours a day to pass an exam, and they’re like, “You know what? I have all this knowledge now, and I’m not going to apply it.” That would just be ridiculous to me. You could technically do that. So, I can just look at—we had a coach who passed the Level 3 exam a few weeks back. And so, we have weekly study groups for our coaches that we could sit down, and we review a video or an article or so, or talk, look at videos of people moving, and I could see the shift week to week. We said, “Hey, let’s look at, in CrossFit, the eight common movement themes.”
Oskar Johed (28:40):
“Let’s look at midline stabilization.” Now we talked about that for an hour, looked at some videos, and then we said, “Hey, go out and apply that specifically. Look for that when you coach for the next few hours in the next few sessions and see if you can identify your eye and be better looking for midline stabilization.” Oddly enough, they get better at that, and then they keep doing that for every single thing. They read about the Zone because that’s a part of the test, so they want on the Zone diet for three days just to refine their eye and calibrate
this stuff to apply it, right? So, you would be a complete idiot if you did not apply the knowledge that someone is handing you. If you take the time to go through a certification, regardless of that’s weightlifting, gymnastics, or nutrition or mindset or whatever. So, no, the diploma doesn’t make any sense, but the pursuit of getting there, as long as there’s some kind of practical part to it, then I guarantee as a residual consequence of you earning that paper on the wall, you should be a better trainer.
Mike Warkentin (29:39):
Yeah. So, my position is very similar to yours. I think you need a bare minimum qualification that allows you to be insured, right? And you have to have some technical knowledge of some stuff. Like you can’t just be a fitness coach and have no clue about anything. You need to understand something. And in addition to that, you need to have a desire to improve your craft. Now, whatever that might be, because here’s the thing: If I get another credential—let’s say I decide I want to do a CSCS, and I’m going to invest all this time in studying for this exam and blah blah blah blah, but I’m still kind of a jerk and not very likable in front of my clients, it’s not going to make me a better coach because my clients are all going to leave because I’m an ass, right?
Mike Warkentin (30:13):
So here’s the thing, I would evaluate more credentials, but like this: Will this credential allow me to produce better results faster for my clients? If the answer is yes, get that credential. If the answer is no, you don’t need it because it’s just another thing on your business card. Coop’s written about this. He had this business card with all this alphabet soup on it. It didn’t make him a better coach, and he was very knowledgeable, maybe the best, most knowledgeable trainer in his entire town, but he said he was going broke, right? So, the idea is get the credentials that allow you to work, pursue improvement at all times, but that improvement may require credentials, like if you want to take an Olympic weightlifting course to be a specialty coach to help your clients qualify for the totals they want.
Mike Warkentin (30:55):
Yes. But you don’t have to get every single credential because you might be able to work within your gym system—like Oskar, you said Karl has set up. Working through that system will also allow you to become an excellent coach even without an additional letter after your name. So that’s, I think, a really, really key one. I want to ask you this, Oskar, as we close this out: We talked about focus. So, focus this for our listeners. What can a gym owner right now do to start improving a coaching product? And let’s keep it super simple. Help them figure out one thing that they could actionably do today at whatever level they’re at to start making their product better.
Oskar Johed (31:30):
Oh, one thing. It’s going to be—
Mike Warkentin (31:31):
I’ll give you a couple.
Oskar Johed (31:33):
Yeah, I’m trying to be as concise as possible. Like the number one thing—the number one rule I have is to never walk by someone without saying something, so the worst thing you can do is just ghost someone. Just not even acknowledging them.
Mike Warkentin (31:47):
Good lift.
Oskar Johed (31:48):
Slightly not—no, not even that. Slightly better. Slightly better is just like a good. At least you’re—and then slightly better than that is still like, “Good job, Mike.”
Mike Warkentin (31:59):
With the name. Yeah, the name, right?
Oskar Johed (32:01):
Still pretty bad, right? Then slightly better would be, “Hey Mike, you’re rounding your back.” Like at least I’m acknowledging that you’re doing something wrong. That’s still pretty low. They would not even meet the high bar. But then like, OK, maybe, “Mike, chest up,” right? And then acknowledge, high five, better job. So, make sure you never walk by someone, and if you move systematically—if you coach more than one person, if you just make sure you move systematically. Like if you walk—you start from the whiteboard, and you keep walking clockwise in the room, and if you allow yourself to never walk by someone, as a rule of thumb, never walk by someone without saying, honestly say, “Good job.” Once again, “Only good job in terms of good effort. I see no improvement, but good effort,” or “Actually, that is an improvement in your mechanics.” Then everyone at the end of the class would have—like the total number of “good jobs” would be equal, right? So never walk by someone without actually acknowledging something. And if you’re going to say something, at least make it productive.
Mike Warkentin (32:58):
So that’s a really good one. That could be something in your coaching progression at your gym. So now Oskar, talk to me like I’m a gym owner and I’ve just reached the level where my systems are acceptable now. The gym is running pretty well, there’s no raging fires burning, and we’ve determined—you are my mentor, and I’m the gym owner—we’ve determined that it’s time to look at your product right now. Your sales are good, your retention is great, your length of engagement, your average revenue per member, all these numbers are really good, but your coaching maybe could get a little better. As a gym owner—I’m your mentee—what would you tell me? What is the focus starting point for me to start making my product better now that my business is pretty good?
Oskar Johed (33:34):
Number one is obvious. I think one of the pieces obviously is define the process. Like at some point you need to write out your coach journey to have something you can show for people. It’s going to—you also need to have your expectations or your SOP. Like, these are the minimum requirements, maybe just minimum requirements total or just by experience level. Start writing out your standards or your expectations. You’ve got to make it easier because then you say, “Hey Mike, you’re a newbie coach. You’re here right now. Don’t worry about all the other stuff. Focus on A, B and C period. Now we’re going to start moving you towards D,E, F, and these are the things, but don’t worry about that eventually.” So that thing obviously is very important. I think that something that’s also very, very effective fast is record your sessions.
Oskar Johed (34:20):
We do that. We mic ourselves up with a wireless mic because it’s great if your trainer or head coach can evaluate all your stuff, but you can’t because they’re on the weekends where you’re spending time with your family. Just mic yourself up with a wireless mic, put up your cell phone in the corner of the room, and then watch it afterwards. And it is going to be huge. So, if you as a coach or the head coach or the owner would do that and just put that—because you’re still probably the best, one of the best trainers in your gym, and then you can evaluate yourself. Like, “Team, here are three things that I think I did pretty well. Here are, I think, pretty bad things. These are things that I probably should improve on.” Because then you show that you’re pretty open and vulnerable to your staff, but they’re still going to think you’re amazing.
Oskar Johed (35:04):
And then that is a very effective way to get your coaches to level up, to watch yourself. Because it’s very uncomfortable to watch yourself. And then after that you start getting feedback from someone who’s better than you are. It could be in this case that you get your more junior coaches to record themselves coaching a session, they evaluate themselves, and you say, “I agree. Keep working on A, B and C.” You can also watch you, but get outside help. Like I’ve offered help to—I can confidently say that I’ve offered to review people’s coaching, like record a session and email to me, and I will give you feedback in a week. And I’ve probably said that for seven years, and I’ve had 10 or so people take me up on the offer. So, I expect and hope that this one might be the one where people go, “You know, what?”
Mike Warkentin (35:53):
A wasted chance.
Oskar Johed (35:55):
Yes. So do it, and I’ll do it. And that’s a very fast tactical way to improve your things. To your point, I’m not going to belabor this, but everybody needs to get better at everything, and everybody needs to improve everything in their business. But if you just focus on one thing, your clients are going to be noticeably changed in the quality of the product. You’re going to tell, “Dude, that was awesome. Thank you very much.” And that brings—even that smile that you just gave me is enough for—I’m going to go, “Dude, that was pretty fun that I spent two minutes before the session started figuring out a progression for the double unders or something, and it worked.” Dude, think about all the other things that I can improve the product by just spending a tiny amount of time to improve it. So, you record your sessions, focus on one thing, and try to get feedback from someone else. And if I attend—if I’m at a gym, if you coach a class, I am not a coach, I have to give you three things you did well and one to two things that I think you should do better. So, feedback rich environment. And it’s hard to say, it’s uncomfortable, but it’s very important.
Mike Warkentin (37:01):
So if you have a structure at your gym right now for coaching, a thing that you could take from this podcast and start doing is record or have your coaches record a session and evaluate it. Even send it to Oskar if you want. That’s a really cool thing that you could do if you have that structure. If you are just at that early stage that I said where I’m at, “Oh, my gym is finally running well, and I want to start looking at coach development and improving my product,” what you’re going to do is you need to set up an evaluation system. What is good, and what is better, and how are we tracking it, right? It’s got to be meticulous, and it doesn’t have to be an endless thing. Chris Cooper: 10 things essential for a coach. Rate them out of 10. The second thing that I would recommend you do: Set up that career journey. Exactly what Oskar said.
Mike Warkentin (37:46):
What is the progression of a coach through your gym? And that doesn’t have to be a million items either. It’s like an apprentice intern program, whatever it is, and then low level, intermediate expert level, whatever those things are. If you do that, you’re going to be well on your way. And the final thing I’ll say, every stage you’re at, regular evaluations are essential. If you just set it and forget it, it’s going to burn down in the background while you’re doing other stuff. You must do this regularly. You, the owner, the CEO, do not have to do this yourself. Someone has to do it. You could certainly delegate this role to a general manager or a head coach at some point. That is very acceptable. But someone needs to be ensuring that your coaches and your product are great. You as the CEO can assign that. Oskar, does that make sense to you?
Oskar Johed (38:30):
Yeah. So, and finally, one thing that I’m just going to end on: The way we do our evaluations now is that if you are the coach and I’m evaluating you, and I could be, to your point, the head coach, or I could just be slightly more senior than you—honestly, I could actually be less senior than you because it’s written down what I should look for because we agreed—and I’m just going to hold you accountable to what we agreed you should focus on. So, what we do is you coach a class; I’m walking almost right by you. We call it the Band-Aid approach.
Mike Warkentin (39:00):
Yes, I like this one.
Oskar Johed (39:01):
I’m walking by you. It’s kind of awkward the first few times, but you get around to it. Because then if you say to a newbie coach, “Hey, start time. Finish on time. Use names,” right? If I walk by you, every time you say a name, “Mike, good job. You said Sarah’s name.” Awesome. Pat shoulders. If you walk by someone and say, “Good job,” I’m like, “Good job. Oh, good job Steven. Good job,” right Mike? So, then we can speed up that feedback loop so much faster, right? And then you can give instant feedback, and then it might be only for the warmup. And then after five minutes, I alleviate the pressure by walking away because I’ve already made that session better. And next time, we do slightly more. Maybe we extend my stay where I’m close to you for slightly longer. And now if you’re experienced, I will walk by you every single—I will walk right by you and give you instant feedback all the time. Because I can talk in one ear, and you can apply that right away in your sessions. It takes some time. But that’s something that’s extremely powerful. And if someone wants to begin to do that or send me a recording of your coaching, hit me up, and I can link you up with myself or Karl, and we’d be more than willing to share how we do things.
Mike Warkentin (40:06):
Where would they send that?
Oskar Johed (40:08):
So Oskar with a K, let’s do at twobrainbusiness.com is going to be the easiest one. So oskar@twobrainbusiness.com. I do think, I don’t know if Karl—send it to me. And I don’t know if it’s Karl or Karl S. So, I don’t really know. Send it to me, and I will forward it to him if needed.
Mike Warkentin (40:24):
That is a huge bonus for podcast listeners. If you want Oskar to take a look at your coaching. Oskar interrupted his vacation to talk to me this morning and his afternoon. So, I want to thank you for doing that, Oskar. This has been super great. You’ve given people a ton of stuff they can use to improve their product at their business. Thank you.
Oskar Johed (40:39):
Thank you, my friend.
Mike Warkentin (40:40):
Oskar Johed. My name is Mike Warkentin, and this is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Thank you so much for watching or listening. Please hit “subscribe” wherever you are. And now here’s Chris Cooper with a final message.
Chris Cooper (40:50):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners, just like you, have already joined. In the group, we share sound advice about the business of fitness every day. I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in that group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today.
