Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Ever had staff members fail to take the ball and run with it? Guess what? It’s your fault, because you didn’t show the staff members the right path. Mike Collette is here to tell you how to mentor your staff and be a leader right after this.
Chris (00:15):
Chris Cooper here to talk about Beyond the Whiteboard, the world’s premier workout tracking platform. Beyond the Whiteboard empowers gym owners with tools designed to retain and motivate members. We all know clients need to accomplish their goals if they’re going to stick around long term, and Beyond the Whiteboard will help your members chart their progress. They can earn badges view, leaderboards, track their macros, assess their fitness levels, and a lot more. Your job is to get great results for your members. Beyond the Whiteboard’s job is to make sure your members see those results and celebrate them. For a free 30-day trial, visit BTwb.com today.
Mike Warkentin (00:52):
This is Two-Brain Radio and I’m Mike Warkentin. Today’s guest is Mike Collette of Prototype Training Systems in Westborough, Massachusetts. Mike had a very good year bracketed by two wins of Two-Brain’s annual award for metrics. He took the trophy in 2020 and 2021 on the strength of huge numbers in the pandemic. Mike didn’t hit these numbers because he does everything himself and he didn’t hit them because he just drops projects on his staff and walks out. He does something a lot of gym owners don’t do. He mentors his staff. So Mike, staff mentorship is a huge win theory, but many of us don’t realize what it actually is. We kind of just think mentorship is leading by example and then letting our staff watch and absorb and follow. But it really isn’t that, it’s not passive at all. So what does staff mentorship mean to you and the crew of Prototype? What have you got going on over there?
Mike Collette (01:38):
Well, first off, thank you so much for having me Mike, and my plan, like I said, it’s grea to be able to be on Two-Brain Radio and talk a little bit about this, bu your question on staff mentorship. I think, you know, if I was to boil it down, it really just comes down to caring, right? So, I think a lot of the Two-Brain gyms or anyone else out there that has a gym that’s listening can probably agree with the fact that you have to care about your staff, but just like Two-Brain preaches, you know, it really starts with understanding what your team members and staff’s values are, what their personal vision or goals are for themselves. And then creating a plan that you’re also holding them accountable to to get them there.
Mike Collette (02:27):
Just like Two-Brain talks about with the career Growth ToolKit, meetings that you might have with your staff. That’s a huge component of what we do to set the stage for each quarter, for our team members and the alignment with their goals and the business goals creates a win-win. So, the accountability component, like you mentioned, Mike, a lot of folks might just, you know, do what I do and watch what I do and then go and do it. You can’t really do that. There has to be added layers of accountability and check-ins to keep people on track, just like you do with your clients and folks that you might be working with to help them achieve their goals.
Mike Warkentin (03:07):
See, and I think like I cared a lot as a gym owner and we don’t have staff now it’s just a one-person show. But when we had staff, I cared a lot, but I did not do a great job of teaching and providing accountability. And so I think, you know, your first comment is I had that part and I think a lot of gym owners do have that because almost no one gets in the fitness business without caring about staff and people. But I think a lot of us really struggled to lay out plans, put in operating systems and procedures and then provide accountability. Did you ever make that mistake or was this, did you always kind of have this leadership figured out? Or where did this come from for you?
Mike Collette (03:43):
That’s a funny question because, no, I think you need to fail a lot to learn. And so, you know, we’ve had.
Mike Warkentin (03:50):
I feel better now.
Mike Collette (03:51):
Yeah. We’ve had a lot of coaches and staff that have come and gone and things didn’t work out. It wasn’t the right alignment. You try to fit a, what is it? That’s the saying? I always get confused around it’s peg into a square hole or whatever. That kind of comes down to alignment, but it also comes down to the, like you mentioned, was the accountability component to it. And yeah, I agree with you. You don’t get into this business if you don’t care, but where that tends to go wrong is the things that you think that you’re doing, that you’re doing it out of like I care, could be detrimental to the development of your team members.
Mike Collette (04:27):
Right. So, so an easy example is when you start taking on the responsibilities that you could delegate, right. Or if you’re trying to make everything perfect and you’re not, you know, let’s say like the things where give someone something to do and they don’t do it well. And instead of, you know, it being a learning opportunity and allowing your staff to fail and learn, you take that responsibility away from them. Right. And that’s where things get kind of finicky, where you start to lose that, you know, you might not have the trust. It might be hard for you to let things go, right? And so you hold everything on yourself, you know, you know what, I’m better at doing this. I’ll just do it. Don’t worry about it. And you avoid those difficult conversations. You avoid that accountability, you avoid that development opportunity. And that’s where people start to feel undervalued. They start to feel like they can’t do things. And that’s where burnout happens. Right. If you’re not developing, you’re gonna burn out.
Mike Warkentin (05:19):
No, I think that really is. I think you hit on something there. I think sometimes that desire to just jump in and do it, do it yourself and you get upset. You’re like, oh, no one can do it like I can. I really think that that is a cover for what you pointed out and that’s that you’re just scared to make the correction, right. It’s easier to just stomp your feet, throw your hands in the air and start doing it yourself than it is to sit down with that staff member, make a correction, even if it’s in a kind way, because a lot of us aren’t comfortable with those conversations. How do you handle stuff like that? Like I’ve heard from a number of successful gym owners, they have to let their staff members fail and learn and then ascend. So how do you handle failure and how do you make it a growth thing and not a negative thing?
Mike Collette (05:57):
It’s such a great question. So someone a lot smarter than me said this, and he’s one of my mentors, his name’s Brent French, Colonel Brent. And he said, the human capacity for avoidance is almost limitless. It’s one of my favorite quotes . And what I mean by that is that we avoid the things that we are scared of, the things that we don’t want to do. And those things are typically the things that are going to get us closer to where we want to be and grow. And so when we avoid those difficult conversations, like, you know, holding someone accountable or, you know, help directing or leading, or having that difficult conversation with someone, and we avoid doing that, we’re avoiding growth in ourselves. So, but it has to start with, I hate saying this, but like, it has to start with like the culture that you have at your gym and with your staff and also the level of trust
Mike Collette (06:56):
And, I guess what I’m trying to say here is the culture that you have with your staff, that they feel safe in the space that they’re in and they feel it’s safe to make mistakes. You know, an example, you know, and someone mentioned this recently to me and I love it is this example of, you know, when you delegate things, you mentioned like it’s hard to let things go. Well, think of it like a glass ball and a rubber ball. You know, if someone drops a rubber ball, it’s going to bounce, not a big deal. They drop a glass ball, it breaks. It’s a big deal. So if you’re delegating things and let’s say you want to get stuff off your plate, and you’re afraid to do things, you got to start with things that are like rubber balls, things that if someone messes up, it’s not that big of a deal. You don’t like give them a glass ball, like something like really, really important that if they mess up, it’s going to cause a big issue.
Mike Warkentin (07:41):
It’s like when someone asks for your cell phone you give them your back-up, right?
Mike Collette (07:44):
Right. I think starts with that, is the culture that you have and it being OK to fail. And then furthermore, like I was mentioning before you have that trust in your staff and they trust in you as the leader, but in order to do that, and this is something that I’ve really put a lot of effort into over the last six to nine months is leading with vulnerability. And, you know, we all have, you know, people say that there’s no, like they don’t have an ego. You know, we have an ego-less culture, everyone has some level of ego, right. But if you can, you know, make that a habit and commit to being vulnerable and letting people know, listen, I don’t know all the answers or, Hey man, I stink at this and not putting up that fake persona per se, that, you know everything, have the answer to everything. If you lead with some vulnerability and your staff knows that you’re a regular person, you’re a human being. Like you make mistakes. Then you can create an environment where it’s OK to make mistakes. Now, like as long as we’re learning from those things as well.
Mike Warkentin (08:54):
You mentioned vulnerability. Listeners. If you want more on that head to our YouTube channel, Jay Cohen, locomotion fitness gym owner, talks about exactly that. And coming up on Two-Brain Radio in just a week or two, we have another gym owner, Justin Keen digging into that exact topic that Mike spoke about. Now, Mike, I want to ask you this one because it’s come up a number of times with successful gym owners that I’ve been speaking to lately, they talked about trust and you can’t, you have to allow people to fail. You have to have trust and you have to connect with your staff members and build relationships. Everyone that I’ve spoken to thus far has pointed to regular one-on-one career Growth ToolKit sessions. Do you think that’s a huge part of building that relationship and then setting up a mentorship plan?
Mike Collette (09:34):
Oh, a hundred percent. I don’t think if you’re having those conversations, at least quarterly with your staff, or with your team members one-on-one, then you’re doing them a disservice because sometimes we like to think things are going really well and it’s on autopilot, but you have to assess and reassess like what their goals are. But I also think in the interim there’s, like I mentioned before, there’s that accountability. It’s that check-in with them on how things are are going.
Mike Warkentin (10:04):
You know, when I was running the gym, we often would have big staff meetings and all we do is complain about stuff or go over the things that were problems. Right. I rarely sat down with people one-on-one and actually talked to them about, you know, are you happy? What do you need? All these different things? Like, are you looking for another job? Are you happy here? Do you want more or less responsibility? Are you having problems? And I’ve talked to number of gym owners just like you who have said that just that quarterly meeting, whether it’s 15 or 20 minutes, even structureless is sometimes a huge, huge thing that’s super insightful that builds a trusting relationship. And then other gym owners who are more structured actually go through the Growth ToolKit plan and they find ways to kind of supercharge their staff to growth. But it’s exactly kind of what you said there. How long have you been doing one-on-one meetings with staff?
Mike Collette (10:50):
Oh my gosh. So we’d have to literally think about it. I mean, for a while, but I wouldn’t say it was as structured as routine as it has been over the last like three years or three or four years, I would say.
Mike Warkentin (11:05):
So that’s huge. So let me ask you this. How did you know that you’re on the right track? Like you said, you had some failures with leadership and so forth and things where you were like learning and developing as a leader of a team. When did you know that you were really starting to make progress and getting some traction?
Mike Collette (11:21):
I honestly, I feel like it’s, you know, it depends on the day, like I said, I don’t have the answers to everything, or anything for that matter. Sometimes I feel like things are going really well. Just like everyone else out there. And sometimes you feel like things are just so far out of your reach that you’re not in control. And that’s, you know, I think like if there was, if I was to say anything over the last, like, you know, year plus or whatever with COVID, I think being deliberate in building, you know, really strong habits and focusing on small change and try not to put an overemphasis on the goals, and that might sound like counterintuitive, but, you know, I think you’ve probably all read the book or if you haven’t, I would recommend is, “Atomic Habits.”
Mike Collette (12:09):
And the idea that like doing these small things over time is what’s going to drive change. It’s not one big, giant thing that you’re going to do that’s going to make the world of difference. Maybe, but for the most part, it’s making these small deliberate changes. My focus over the last several months is putting a lot of deliberate routine focus into the small habits of self-development, getting uncomfortable, having difficult conversations, you know, being like being vulnerable. Like I said, putting myself out there, and those things have continued to pay off and it’s been awesome. But it hasn’t been easy. And, you know, I think self recognition and not self recognition, but awareness, I should say of like where your biggest areas of growth and development are or need to be. That is by far and away the first thing you need to do if you want to be a better leader, because there’s no way that you can be a good leader, if you don’t know where your areas of or your flaws are.
Mike Warkentin (13:12):
Tell me a little bit now about the leadership program that you’ve got in place. I’m really curious to hear some of the details.
Mike Collette (13:18):
So yeah, so, well, I wouldn’t call it a leadership program. It’s more of I guess it would be called like a think tank cause we’re kind of learning as we go. So I’ve been putting a lot of time and energy into learning from, I think one of the just innovators and smartest people and two people that I’ve ever come across as it relates to leadership. And that’s Charlie and Megan who are the co CEOs of a company called Next Jump. So they offer these classes. So I, you know, I don’t want to spend all the time going into the whole backstory of how this all got started, but long story short, they started this thing called the community online academy. And this is like a free thing that anyone can do. So like every Thursday at 11:00 AM, Eastern time they offer this class called leadership in the practice.
Mike Collette (14:11):
So like I mentioned before, one of my mentors, his name’s Brent, he has been involved in Next Jump and has been he’s good friends with Charlie and Megan and he teaches leadership at the graduate level. So he’s been like studying this like whole idea of deliberately developmental organizations and next jump is one of those. And so, he said, this was like, I want to say it was December of 2020, because I mentioned to him, I was like, I need to get better. I want to learn more. I need to put energy into my development. He said, Hey, check out this class. I started going to this class and it’s amazing. And it’s like an hour, hour and a half of just knowledge and like actual applied information and there’s homework and all this sort of stuff.
Mike Collette (14:57):
And there’s, yeah. At one point there was like 200 plus people that are on these like classes and seminars. And they’ve been doing this for, I think they’re on like they’re 60-something like week, over a year. The reason I tell you that is from there, I got involved in this small group program as well. It’s just kind of like , stem off of the leadership and practice. And it’s called the pre resiliency training. So get into a small group with eight to 10 people from different companies all over the world that want to improve their ability to manage difficult conversations, give and get feedback. And so I started learning some stuff in that small group. And then from there, they invited me to the next level, small group workshops.
Mike Collette (15:46):
Now it’s called their leadership think tanks, which is just another level of accountability and difficult conversations. So in any event, so the challenge was, Hey, listen, like take what you’ve learned here and apply that to your staff. Now, some of the folks that are in these groups don’t own businesses, you know, they might be, you know, managers at big fortune 500 companies, or they might be, you know, working in a small business or whatever, and I don’t know how they evolved, kind of found out about this or whatnot, but everyone comes from a different, you know, background or area. And like I said, they’re all over the world. So I, you know, I have the fortune, I’m fortunate enough to have my own business where I was able to take some of my staff members and start putting them into this and going through the same process that I went through.
Mike Collette (16:36):
And so what I did was I sent out a note to all of our staff members, at one of our weekly staff meetings. I said, Hey, listen, I’m going to be doing this for anyone that wants to do it. You can apply. It’s not mandatory. You’re not going to get paid for it. But if you want to get better, if you want to improve, if you want to improve your leadership, you want to improve your ability to give and get feedback. If you want to grow. I recommend doing this, it’s once a week.
Mike Warkentin (17:04):
How many people jumped in?
Mike Collette (17:06):
Yeah. So it’s supposed to be a small group. So I think I offered like five spots, I think, seven or so applied. And I just took five people.
Mike Warkentin (17:14):
That’s out of a staff of how many?
Mike Collette (17:14):
Well have like a, I think like 10 to 11 staff members. But, it was more for the full-time folks that come to our staff meeting. So we have eight or nine full-timers yeah.
Mike Warkentin (17:30):
I needed to know that to see like who decided to like, not get paid, but to improve themselves. I love that idea.
Chris (17:36):
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Mike Collette (18:17):
Yeah. It’s just an hour a week. And so I started taking them through the exact same journey that I went on. And like I mentioned, you know, the stuff that they’re doing with these leadership practice classes and, Charlie and Megan are putting together is like next level of leadership. And they work with, you know, some of the biggest companies out there, to help them lead. And their company is not, their business is not leadership. This is just something that they do because they’re really good at it. It’s kind of crazy. So like you have, if you haven’t like looked into this company, it’s just unbelievable. It’s free. And I told Chris Cooper about it too and he went to one session with me last week and he really enjoyed it.
Mike Warkentin (18:57):
What’s the name of the website again, where people can find this.
Mike Collette (19:00):
It’s community online academy. Edu.perksatwork.com like perks at work is like, their business. It’s again, it’s hard to kind of like explain, because it’s leadership that they’re teaching and coaching, but it’s not their business. Their main business is like, it’s like an e-commerce sort of business and they’re an extremely successful company. And they basically give this all away for free and they give away. So every Thursday is like their co Thursday and they do tons of classes. So leadership and practice, they host, but there’s a ton of other people that host things, fitness classes, they have, like I said, these leadership classes, they have, you know, special guests that come on and just give away free information. It’s a free platform for anyone to do.
Mike Warkentin (19:52):
They don’t come after you for a credit card out for like three seconds.
Mike Collette (19:55):
No, no, it’s all free. It’s all there. It’s all about giving. Their whole model is on giving, in their last live session that Chris was on, they were talking about their marketing strategy and they never paid a dime for any marketing. Their marketing strategy has been about just giving, giving, giving, just like you guys do too, Two-Brain just giving away content.
Mike Warkentin (20:15):
Check out our free tools if you’re listening and you want to know what Mike’s talking about.
Mike Collette (20:17):
It’s so true. It’s so it’s so funny how the best in the business think the same. So there’s something to be said about that. So, OK. So where was I? So, I’ve started to take those and apply that to my staff. And like I said, the first step in terms of like being a better leader is about like, I talked about like awareness. So identifying like, what are the things that like you’re not doing well, we refer to them as red arrow behavior. So what are the things that prevent others from giving you the truth, right? What are the things that you do that prevent someone from being honest with you? Because if people aren’t being honest with you and there’s no awareness, or you’re not able to get that awareness of what’s actually going on, what are the things that you’re doing, it’s really hard for you to kind of take the next step and work on those things and take action, which would be like the second step.
Mike Warkentin (21:07):
I’m thinking about my you’re asking, I’m getting squidgy, Mike, you’re asking me questions. I’m thinking about my marriage here. You know.
Mike Collette (21:14):
To be honest with you, that’s the first thing that I thought of too. The biggest things that they kind of communicated in these leadership and practice sessions is, you know, if you were to boil down leadership, it’s really two simple things. It’s like, it’s defined by your judgment and your ability to make great decisions. And so that’s how they’ve kind of like, if you think about that, like everything in life is the decision. You might make the wrong decision, or you might have habits that you haven’t really put a good enough job or emphasis on in improving. But those are ultimately decisions whether they’re automatic or not. So as a leader, if you can improve your judgment and your decision-making, you’re going to improve your ability to lead. So all these things kind of tie back to that concept.
Mike Collette (22:02):
And so, like you mentioned before, like, you know, about like practicing what you preach. That’s certainly a part of this too. And if we can help people, you know, let’s say our staff and help them to be better decision makers, then you’re creating leaders within your organization. And that takes a lot of deliberate practice and a lot of difficult conversations. And you also have to build that resiliency, not only in yourself, but also in the people that you’re going to be leading and mentoring. And, you know, inevitably if you can help people be better leaders, then you can create autonomy. And that’s when you have a successful business.
Mike Warkentin (22:41):
So this is not a conversation that I could have had with a gym owner five or eight years ago, right back at that stage. I think we were at the height of maybe the floor wiper debate or something like that. Like this is different stuff. Cause it’s been a real evolution from what gym owners are talking about. And this is like, this is like growing your business in general, to say nothing of being a gym owner in the fitness industry. Like it’s incredible the way that sort of our industry and the leading lights in that industry have evolved. I need to know. So what are you seeing in your business now that you yourself are investing time in becoming a better leader. You’re actively working on this, and this is, again, it’s not coaching classes or worrying about floor wipers and, you know, rowing machines and so forth. This is you investing in leadership, and now you’ve got your staff investing in leadership. What are you seeing inside your facility as a result of all this?
Mike Collette (23:31):
And it’s like, it’s one of those things. Cause one of the first questions that I asked when going onto these sessions is how do you measure your development? How do you measure like the improvements? Because we, you know, I think something that I’ve learned and taken away from Two-Brain is like, metrics, right? And measuring these things and you guys do an amazing job taking concepts and taking, you know, all this data. And then, and then applying it and giving like, Hey, this is what’s working. The answer to that question was it’s not as not black and white, you know, people are going to see a deliberate change in you, they’re going to say stuff like, wow, you’re a little bit, have you been doing something like you’ve changed. Or yeah. Right. Or like, there’s something different about you?
Mike Collette (24:16):
Like, what’s different about you? Like, that’s the change that you tend to see, people start to notice there’s something different about you, the way you carry yourself and that sort of thing. But back to your question about how it has changed things. I mean, the people that are like the coaches that are in your gym, I mean, I’m just so proud of them. I mean, an easy example is one of those coaches have now spun off and created another business. Right. And so like, if I can give you like, in terms of how you’re measuring it and, you know, the improvements in their ability to be more productive, be more goal oriented and make better decisions like we discussed. But this is still like really new. This is like, we’re, like I said, at eight or nine plus weeks into doing this, but the feedback that I’ve gotten from them on it has been overwhelmingly positive. And I think bringing the team together though that small group is specifically, has been really, really good for them. And just the ability for them to be more honest with each other and be more honest and communicate better has been incredible because, you know, communication is such an integral part of any sort of successful business or a relationship for that matter.
Mike Warkentin (25:31):
You talked a little bit about this whole thing coming with some, you know, increasingly tough conversations. What are some examples of that in the gym setting of what’s happening?
Mike Collette (25:40):
Oh man. Imagine if your client doesn’t show up, right. Like, yeah. How do you manage that? How do you have that stern, honest conversation with them, unfiltered communication? You have, you have a staff member that doesn’t doesn’t show up to work. Right. And I think, you know, in the Two-Brain, the summit, Jocko talked about that you refer to as like escalation of counseling, right? So it’s like how to have those tough conversations. Having the resiliency to say, OK, I’m going to have this conversation. I’m going to be honest with you. I’m not gonna to avoid it. Right. Which we were talking about before, but there’s so many different, you know, you can think from staff or from a client perspective, those tough conversations that might arise, let’s say like, I dunno, your landlord, some issue with your landlord. And it’s like a difficult conversation that you have to have with them. Let’s say you want to break your lease, right? Like there’s, you know, you can think of a million different scenarios that it’s going to be a tough conversation that you have to, you might have to have with someone.
Mike Warkentin (26:38):
My heart rate’s spiking just now that you’ve mentioned like three of them. Do the tough conversations get easier, the more that you have them or do you just get quote unquote worse at avoiding them?
Mike Collette (26:52):
I think it depends on the person that you’re asking that to, but I think for the most part, no one looks forward to having difficult conversations, no matter how many difficult conversations they have, they just build the resiliency, like I mentioned to have them, they have better, it becomes more of an automatic response. And they know how to manage those conversations and have them better. Just like, we didn’t know how to navigate, you know, COVID situations at the gym, right. Someone comes in with that test positive for COVID the first time that happened. It was like, oh my God, what do we do? And you kind of freak out like, oh my God, oh my God. Oh my God. And then, you know, happens a bunch more times and then you have protocols in place and then things go a little bit easier. So I think for the most part, you just become better at having them and you understand, you know, the different scenarios that might pop up and how to navigate through those difficult conversations.
Mike Warkentin (27:46):
Yeah. I’ve heard from other people that the tough conversations are always tough, but you still, you go into them with more confidence and you’re less likely to avoid them when you have them regularly, because it’s like, it’s kind of like doing hard workouts. If you keep doing hard workouts and CrossFit workouts, and you do them every day, it just becomes something you do and you address them and you get through it and everything’s, you know, everything’s better. But if you avoid things, then you start avoiding more and more and more. And all of a sudden, it’s five years. You don’t want to do Fran. I’m not speaking from experience or anything, but right. So tell me this one, like how can gym owners, there’s some out there for sure that like, we’re hitting some nerves with and they’re listening and they want to be better leaders, or they know that maybe their leadership skills aren’t up to par or they’re just like sole proprietors looking to upgrade their teams soon and want to do it properly. What would you say to someone out there, how do they learn to lead better? What are the steps, and I’m talking like the first baby steps. Maybe it’s not the level you’re at where you’re at, where you’re like, kind of that tinker level upper-level entrepreneur, where you’re really digging in with a staff of like 10 or whatever. What would you say to someone who’s just coming out of that, you know, that first phase and wants to start growing as a leader.
Mike Collette (28:52):
Awesome question. And I think that’s really hard for a lot of people is to kind of figure out what to do. Where do I start? Yeah. Where do I start? So the first thing that I would say would be, like I mentioned, is recognizing or starting to bring awareness to what are your biggest issues? What are the things that you’re doing that you need to change? Like what’s the awareness, right? So taking some time and thinking through, OK, what are all these things that like you aren’t good at? Or what are these things that you tend to avoid more often or might make you anxious? Or what are those things that, those little habits and things that you might do routinely that you don’t really realize. But if you think about it, might cause people to not want to be truthful with you, or you might not be truthful with others. So bringing awareness to yourself. OK. So that self kind of recognition component, that’s that’s number one.
Mike Warkentin (29:50):
Basically observe yourself and like kind of step outside yourself and look in the mirror and don’t be afraid if you see a few warts.
Mike Collette (29:56):
Yeah, exactly. And like, we talked about it, like, you know, Charlie and Megan of next jump, and they refer to it as the red arrow behaviors. What are those red arrow behaviors? So that’s one and that has been extremely important. And then the second thing is taking action on creating better habits around improving those things. Right? So focus on those small changes, one to 2% change per day. So you’re not going to go from wherever you are now in a week, you’re a completely changed different person. It doesn’t work like that. But what are the small habits that you can do? That could be something like every, you know, and Charlie gives us a perfect example is like set up your Monday mornings where like, if you have the ability and you’re not in there coaching classes on Monday, on Monday, have a very structured routine of wake up, you do this, you do that.
Mike Collette (30:47):
And map out that schedule, then put deliberate time into like thought and to thinking. And that would be like, the first step is like building—the second step is taking that action and starting to think through what are those things that you want to do and building those habits? And this could be one of those habits is like taking deliberate time from the beginning of the week to map out your entire entire week and to actually think on what do you need to do? What do you need to grow? Who do you need to work on, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Creating that like plan and just making those small, small changes, but doing it consistently, doing it every single week. Right.
Mike Warkentin (31:18):
Would you ask someone, like you can observe yourself and do some digging inside, but would you ask someone, what are some of the habits that I have that would be my red flags?
Mike Collette (31:27):
Oh, so like, what if you were to ask me like—
Mike Warkentin (31:34):
You know, you could, you know, observe your behaviors, dig into yourself, see what kind of things you’re doing, but could you also take the approach or would you personally, Mike, would you like say to someone, what are some of the leadership flaws that I have? Or what are some of the things that I do that de-motivates you or things like that, like, those are some hard and I think it was Per Mattson, one of our mentors spoke about that, asking some, really some questions here. You might not want to hear the answers to, but the answers might give you more insight than anything else. Like, would you ever take that approach?
Mike Collette (32:02):
100%, but the counter to that is, are those people going to be honest with you?
Mike Warkentin (32:07):
Woo. There’s a good one.
Mike Collette (32:08):
So, yeah. So, but at the same time, it’s like, you have to identify those things and identify those red arrow behaviors. So we talked about leading with vulnerability, so working in small groups and having these conversations, creating an environment where people feel comfortable about being truthful. Right. There’s all that set up. So you can go up to anyone and Hey, can you give me feedback? And they might be your closest friends. And they might be like, oh no, you’re doing a great job. You smell great. Yeah. Yeah. You smell awesome. You’re good. And like that doesn’t help you. Right. And you know, especially as like gym owners or entrepreneurs, you know, we might, and this is one of the things that I’ve been like for sure working on is like crave that feedback. But like, do you give off like the wrong impression when someone actually is honest with you? Like, do you know what I mean? Like, do you give off that feeling or that vibe and like, I don’t really want to tell them like what I’m really feeling, because I know it’s going to really upset him and that’s not, you know what I mean? Those are things you have to work on yourself.
Mike Warkentin (33:10):
That’s a huge point because yeah, if you’ve set up this whole thing where, you know, you want to be surrounded by yes people and everyone knows it, and then you start to like, try and make this change to ask for honest feedback. No one’s going to give it to you, you’re just going to be sitting in your 10 year old, dry fit shirt that smells like hell.
Mike Collette (33:27):
So it’s so interesting. This whole process has been so eye-opening. So think about like the times where, like, let’s say you are, you created this like environment where you’re like, yes. Peopl, yes you, yes, yes, yes. And then like stuff doesn’t get done. And it’s like, you sit down and be like, why is that person doing their job? Or why like, why is that happening? Why is it happening? You have to look at yourself and like that self-reflection like, so, you know, you’ve created an environment. I’ve certainly been been one of those people that have done this is you create this environment where you think people are on board, you communicate, you think you’re doing all the right things and they don’t do those things. And you blame them, it’s their fault. But you got to look at yourself too, and that’s important.
Mike Warkentin (34:08):
So I’m not going to take this any further because you’ve hit on something people can take away right now. And that’s self-reflection. Figuring out what some of your red flags are and then incremental change. And it’s two simple things that people can do gym owners can do right now. So Mike, all I’m going to do is I’m going to tell gym owners to do those two things and I’m going to say congratulations to you. We didn’t talk much about your award and the metrics and so forth. But I think if people listen to the show, they’re going to have some understanding of why that award was given you, because you do a lot of interesting things that sets you up for pretty significant metrics success. So congratulations, Mike, and thank you for being here.
Mike Collette (34:44):
Thanks so much, Mike. I appreciate you. And I have some more additional resources on this stuff and worksheets that I’ve worked through. So I can happy to send those out. If you’re interested in looking at them.
Mike Warkentin (34:53):
Would you like people to contact you directly? Or do you want me to send them to me and we’ll put it in the show notes what’s best for you?
Mike Collette (34:59):
Sure, sure. They can contact me directly. You can send me an email. It’s mike@prototypetraining.com. I’m happy to, I’m an open book. So I’m happy to give all the information that I’ve been been learning. I’m not, you know, I’m not hoarding it. So it’s been extremely helpful for me. And I think it’d be something really amazing for more folks to learn about and implement.
Mike Warkentin (35:24):
That’s a huge deal listeners. If you want to talk to Mr. Collette here about some of the stuff that he spoke about, send him an email. Thanks, Mike. That is an awesome resource. I’m Mike Warkentin and that was Two-Brain award winner Mike Collette with his deep thoughts on leadership. Before you go, hit the subscribe button, make sure you don’t miss an episode. Then go over to the Gym Owners United group on Facebook. Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper is in there all the time, dropping data and sharing strategies, all free. You won’t see him posting in any other public Facebook group. That’s Gym Uwners United on Facebook.
