Josh (00:00):
Mike. Good afternoon, sir. How are you today?
Mike (00:38):
Good, Josh. How are you?
Josh (00:40):
The reason that I wanted to bring you on to the podcast today is really, you know, we’ve had so many great conversations offline, just talking about all the different participants that have come through the course. And what has struck me as interesting is that there are no two people that are on the exact same journey when they come through your one-on-one coaching course. And it, and I don’t know why this surprised me so much, but when you’ve shared, you know, a handful of the examples of these coaches, which we’re going to get into in just a second, it just really boggles my mind that we are seeing such vast differences, because I remember early on one of the things that we were thinking is that it’s either going to appeal to brand new coaches that are looking to coach one-on-one and, you know, do personal training, or we’re going to grab, you know, veteran coaches that may be all they ever did for 10 years was group coach.
Josh (01:39):
But now they want it to kind of diversify a little bit and do one-on-one coaching and you have proven that completely wrong. And so what I want to ask first of all today is what’s an example of somebody that has come through the course that has really gone on to coach in a more non-traditional way. And what I mean by that is, you know, typically we see people come through and go on to become personal trainers and do just, you know, one-on-one coaching, they’ll grab a couple of PT clients go on from there, but you’ve shared with me a pretty unique example of somebody recently that has come through the course. And I was hoping that you could kind of talk through that with me.
Mike (02:22):
Yeah, for sure. That’s a very fair assessment, but you know, I think when I came on, I think we’re about a year, year and a half ago to the mentorship side of it. My expectation was, is almost that it was going to be, you know, a very repetitive kind of talking through the same course content and then having the same sorts of discussions and it’s like, no two snowflakes have been the same for sure. And that’s what makes it like, literally the most exciting part of my day is talking to these coaches. I get such a charge out of it. And yeah, we were talking about, I actually, I almost group them into an avatar. This example you were bringing up because it’s happened three or four times. And it seems like it’s an east coast thing in the United States for some reason.
Mike (03:05):
But, we have coaches who come through and they’ve been singled out. Usually, you know, in this example, they’ve been singled out as these, vibrant, connector type people in the gym population. And the owners approached them and said, Hey, we’d really love it if you were part of our team. And the example we’re looking at these three or four ladies who have kind of gone through the course, really embody what we do, you know, I call them module one clients because everything they needed to know to do the rock star things they’re doing now, we covered in module one and everything else was gravy, right? So these ladies would come to the course and they’re not jumping in and doing regular one-on-one personal training. That may be the goal down the road, but they’ve jumped into this almost CSM role where they are the person they’re the people that shepherd everybody through those scary initial stages of gym membership.
Mike (04:02):
So, you know, the group that I’m talking about, they’ve kind of taken on the role of doing the no sweat intros, you know, being that person, that smiling face, that person who knows all of your, you know, the great points of commonality, and then they take them through the onboarding or the on-ramp process, and kind of do a really, really good job of making that transition from on-ramp to general population CrossFit class the easiest possible thing, because that on its own coming into on-ramp as a stressful situation for people who aren’t used to that gym environment, right. We’ve been in it for years, we were comfortable in it. There’s a lot of people who come in and they really need that person to not only be patient with them coming through on-ramp, but to make that connection so that they’re transitioning to regular group activity is as seamless as possible.
Mike (04:51):
So it’s been a really neat role. I mean, I follow most of the people who come through the course on social media. So I get to see the end product. And I’ve had some follow-up with gym owners who have just said, like, your course has made these people able to do the job they do, and it’s made my life exponentially easier. Right? They’re not having to handle those NSI. They’re not having to worry about their onboarding process. They’ve got great retention because the people who come through the on ramp are excited to make that leap to the next step because they have a great transition plan. Right. So, that’s been one of my favorite kind of avatar is people who’ve come to the group and there’s many of them. But that’s been my favorite one just to talk to those people, because one of the first questions that we ask people when they come into the course is, you know, along this line of, if you’re familiar with Two-Brain, it’s, you know, what is your perfect day?
Mike (05:46):
And, you know, we have them send over some notes of what their assessment is. And I would say those three or four ladies, who’ve kind of ended up in that position that we’re talking about. I read through their notes before we even got on the first call. And I was like, I’ve got to meet these ladies. I’ve got to meet this person because they are literally right now living their perfect day. Like you could smell it, taste it. It was like, you know, sometimes you don’t know, you’ve kind of feel like, Hmm, kind of deal with somebody who’s in a bit of state of flux. So they don’t know what they want to do. This group of ladies was just like, we’re living it. We’re excited about everything. And we’re people who are going to bring that attitude to everybody else.
Josh (06:27):
Yeah. And you know, I’ve honestly never heard you share that part before that, you know, obviously I know that they do like the perfect day exercise, but tha they’re pretty much living their perfect day, which is really fascinating to me because then it begs the question, OK. If you are doing that, then what’s the driving force for you to kind of want to go and take on this position, you know, at your gym, have you ever, I’m sure you kind of asked them those questions, right?
Mike (06:57):
Yeah. I think that plays into part of it right. Part of their perfect day is that they’re getting this opportunity and the opportunity is exciting. It’s different than what they maybe were doing, you know, in their professional lives up to that point and that opportunity to help people and to be that like shining bright spot in people’s lives, it’s just super, super exciting. Right?
Josh (07:24):
Yeah. That really is. I mean, there’s something to be said for the opportunity to be part of something bigger than yourself, right? Yeah. And kind of the fulfillment that comes from that. Something I wanted to circle back because, you know, maybe somebody who’s listening, that’s not really familiar. You know, with the course content or the modules, you said that these are really like module one coaches, can you provide a little bit more detail? What you mean when you say that? Of course, I know what you mean, but for those that don’t.
Mike (07:55):
Yeah. I mean, to give you a rundown on module one and our call, the mentorship side of things. So when clients come through the course, they get three calls with a mentor. We have them work through the module and send us some homework, which has become really customizable as we progress through, you know, learning our role in the whole process of module one. We talk a lot about the coach. So we get to know them a lot, almost like a really in depth no sweat intro. We want to know what that perfect day is. We want to know what’s driving them. We really want to find out what their niche is. If they have a niche, you know, and that’s something we try to work through in that first call to say, like, what, you know, CrossFit is a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
Mike (08:37):
And fitness is a lot of different, exciting things. What’s the one thing that makes them real passionate and how can we help them fill that passion with coaching? We also talk a lot about how we celebrate success with the concept of bright spots a lot, we really walked through some mock client consults. They do some with their friends and family and with varied results. Because, you know, I know we all have people in our lives who would participate willingly and give us great feedback and questions and make us work for it. And then there are other people in our lives who would maybe fool around a little bit and not give us the best, you know, so I asked them to do it no matter what the response is, and then we analyze how we would kind of role play, how we would do that situation better.
Mike (09:26):
So when they come out of module one, I really feel like we’ve talked about that initial intro session enough, that there’s a lot of confidence that they could walk into the gym today and be handed, you know, an appointment for a no sweat intro and be able to knock it out of the park. Right. We talk about how it’s more about that relationship development than it is, you know, a sales meeting and the less it feels like a sales meeting the more likely it is to become a sale because of that relationship development.
Josh (09:58):
So this may seem like a softball question, and I promise everybody, this was certainly not planned, but I am a baseball fan. The all-star game was last night. So I am going to toss the softball question. If I’m a gym owner, one of the, I know this to be true, that one of the scariest roles that you could ever kind of pass off to somebody is that sales role, which is what’s going on in the no sweat intro. If I was a gym owner that was looking to do that and considering, you know, man, I don’t know, what’s the right thing to do. Where can I send them? Do you feel like you could shepherd somebody through this course? And they would come out being much better off at that NSI process than not?
Mike (10:45):
100%. Yeah, I think, I mean, it is a softball question cause we’re talking about my course, so I’m biased.
Josh (10:52):
Right, right. Full disclosure, full bias here, but still.
Mike (10:55):
I think the more we talked about my, or the owner’s role in this a lot, you and I, and I think the more the owner’s involved at the beginning, or the general manager’s involved throughout the process, the better we tailor this experience to what they want the coach come out of the other side with. Right. You know, I’ll call those ladies module one ladies. I really think after we left them going through module one and those practice assessments, and then going through the module one call, I would say that they’re, you know, 10 times better equipped to walk into that process. And I think we’ve all done NSIs with various levels of background and training. And we all know that it takes it takes reps to get practice down. Right. But they get those reps in. And really if the owner approached us and said, you know, I really, really want this person to do this one singular role, in module one.
Mike (11:52):
And the homework we could prescribe would be, you know, tailored directly towards that. You know, I gave out some different homework in module one that’s not necessarily related to that, but it’s related to the coaching component. But I’ve given out completely different homework in terms of, you know, creating social media or, you know, writing or looking for opportunities. So, we can definitely tailor that and make that coach very much more comfortable walking into their first NSI and getting those reps at a much higher level than kind of struggling to figure it out.
Josh (12:25):
Something I’m curious about is the role-playing aspect because, I don’t know if these coaches are like me, but role-playing makes me incredibly uncomfortable to do. I don’t know why because, I don’t know if it’s, because I know it’s not real, like when I’m in the quote unquote sales role or doing a consultation, I’m very comfortable with doing that. How are they reacting to this role-play stuff?
Mike (12:51):
Yeah. I’m the same as you with role play. I don’t, I mean, the traditional sales seminar type role play gives me the heebie-jeebies too. It seems very disingenuous. It seems fake and fake role-playing produces fake results. So we don’t necessarily role play in the, Hey I’m Mike, I’m coming into your gym to check it out, but we talk a lot about like barriers that those coaches or CSMs in that role might see that the normal person would put up to, you know, joining your gym or the idea of participating in something like a CrossFit style gym. nd we work around strategies on how we would bring that person around so that, you know, developing that relationship instead of letting the barrier get in the way. Right? So the question I asked these coaches a lot of times is like, Hey, Josh, you’re in this role, you’re obviously a fit person and your family and your friends probably see you as the fittest.
Mike (13:57):
You know, one of the people they’d go to for fitness. When they say like, Hey, I I’d love to join your gym, but, what are those buts? What are those buts? And let’s work our way through them. So my top two, 100% of the time are time and money, right? And then there’s fear comes up a lot in a lot of different ways. It’s like fear of CrossFit and like, the feeling that someone needs to be in that high level of shape before they get into a CrossFit group, maybe not knowing the lingo, not knowing the movements. And so we really have a lot of strategies built into, especially Two-Brain gyms, to talk people around that safety issue or that fear issue, right? You’ve got scaling, we’ve got, you know, on-ramp programs, we’ve got great coaches. And so we can really talk our way around that. Time.
Mike (14:44):
And the money ones are interesting because in my opinion, in my experience, time and money are gonna be the one and twp things that people bring up when they’re on the fence about joining your facility. And they kind of want you to say, I get it so they can walk away without feeling embarrassed, but they also kind of want you to call them out on their BS a little bit and say work around it. But it’s those two things that come up at the beginning of a gym relationship. But it’s also the thing that they’re going to see on the end of the gym relationship when someone is just kind of bored with your services, or are they had a situational change in their life, time and money are going to be the things that we talked about on the way out the door, sp having good strategies to talk about.
Mike (15:26):
Those two things is super, super important. You know, and a lot of times, you know, it’s almost, it’s almost like, you know, you want to find out what their habits are and where they’re putting those resources so that we can, you know, look at what’s the least productive resource where they use that resource and fill it with exercise, right? The pandemic. I mean, it’s affected everybody in different ways, but the pandemic has done one amazing thing for coaches, especially personal training coaches. It’s proved that I can reach you anywhere in the world at any time of the day and the time doesn’t necessarily, you know, that’s not as much of a barrier anymore because I can get to you from anywhere. Right. So we talked about those more than we talked about, like kind of, you know, the classic role play that makes you and I both nervous.
Josh (16:18):
Oh man, I’m going to be honest. There was a whole lot of good that you said there, but my biggest takeaway was this image that you put in the back of my head, that I’m forever going to remember that my family sees me as the fittest person in the family, that I am that one. And I’m going to imagine that they’re following me around with a trophy going Josh is the fittest person in our family because I know that’s not true. So thanks for that, Mike. I knew I liked you man, from one bald guy to another. But I do want to circle back to something that you said, a couple of minutes ago is you kind of hinted down this road that you, you either discover, you know, in conversation with coaches or maybe they kind of bring it to the forefront, but something about their niche. And I want to hear more about what you mean by that, because I feel like that’s another kind of group of coaches, you know, or avatar. What have you really found success in working with?
Chris (17:28):
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Mike (18:57):
Yeah, I think, I mean, from the beginning of my involvement with this course, our conversation with you and I has always been, you know, our experience, I’ve been at Catalyst for 16 years and coaching other places for years before that. Any of the certifications we’ve taken have left us with this idea that, OK, now the last page of the textbook last page of the quiz, and there’s always this feeling at the end of it that says now what? You know, and I think our course does a really, really good job, especially with the mentorship component. I know Jen and Sean and Colm do the same, you know, good work with their stuff is that we from call one to call three, really try to provide this strategy to say, who are you? Where do you want to go? And how can we help you to get there and make this as much of a longevity journey that you’re going on as opposed to just doing it to pay the bills.
Mike (19:50):
So, you know, we talk about module one an awful lot, and there’s lots of great stuff in module two and module three as well. But one of the first questions we started talking about in module one is like, what are you excited about? You know, are you just excited about helping everybody? If you are, there’s nothing wrong with that, right. But you know, I always try to ask these coaches, like, you know, we’ve got powerlifting, Olympic lifting, gymnastics, running, and rowing and CrossFit. What’s the one thing that if it was programmed, that you’d be the most excited to coach. Right? And we build on that. So, you know, I have the coaches for the most part, if you don’t mind me going on the sidetrack, I have them leave module one with one of one or two homework assignments and those two homework assignments, one of them is based on this concept of the niche, where I want them to start producing content.
Mike (20:42):
So it can be written. It can be, you know, we talked before we got on here that I’m trying to learn how to use Instagram. And I’ve never felt like an older man than I do now. But it can be written. It can be video. It can be whatever that coach is comfortable with. But by the time they finish my course, we have a very reasonable ask that they produce three pieces of content and they publish them and they provide them to their gym owner to say, Hey, I made this, can I keep making this? I’d like to do this because it’s going to help me build my business. So we really started talking about that niche. And if there’s resources that I can point them towards, you know, my niche, I learned a long time ago that I love powerlifting, but I really, really love running and biking.
Mike (21:23):
And that’s what gets me excited. And that’s the clients I want to work with at the gym right now and in programming. So we try to foster that excitement. And I really think the coaches who come in and I’m not saying, if you don’t have a niche already, you’re not going to get the same bang for your buck out of the experience. But if you come in with a real solid niche, it’s like a rocket ship, right? There’s a lot of these coaches who come in and say, I’m really stoked about Olympic lifting. You know, I’ve taken all the certifications I’m passionate about and I’m trying to learn to be better at it all the time. I’m not going to teach them to become a better Olympic lifter, but I’m going to give them the tools that they can use to communicate to their clients.
Mike (22:01):
And I’m going to give them a plan so that when they leave the course after module three, they know exactly what is next. They know what their plan is to continue to build their business. We talk about logical next steps for their putting our stuff into action. And then looking for that next educational experience. Even if it doesn’t come under the Two-Brain Coaching umbrella, right? So I want them to, you know, we want to foster that. So we try to really bang out a plan and share that with the owner at the end to say, here’s where this person wants to be. Here’s how we get them there. And here’s what I’ve seen in them. And to be honest, any of these ones that come through who already have that niche when they get to the end of the course, I’m like, I would hire you in a second.
Mike (22:45):
Yeah. So that’s pretty cool. The other homework assignment I give out came out of the pandemic and it was this video project. One of the things we asked as homework as they worked through these modules is shadowing, right? And shadowing is great if you’ve got someone good making the shadow, right. And the problem last March and beyond was a lot of coaches were coming through our course and they had no one to shadow. And so what I started to do at that point was just have them create video content, you know, pick five movements, ones that you’re nervous about coaching, or you really want to hone your skills on, you know, almost, you know, rehearse your delivery for it. And then they filmed some videos with a lot of times, those videos that they film are natural social media content anyway, right?
Mike (23:39):
They’re like, Hey guys, here’s how we make this deadlift better. And here’s how we give really concise coaching cues on doing the deadlift. And here’s why we’re going to do it. We’re big on why. So why am I going to program a deadlift for an athlete? Simple, they’re going to run faster. They’re going to jump higher. Everyone would pay money for that, but why am I going to program a deadlift for a non-athlete? And that becomes a more difficult question. So 90, 80, 90% of the videos are really, really well done. The ones that are missing anything are always that why. Because that’s not natural for coaches to do right. So, I have them write it down at the beginning. Why, and just underline it, I say underline why until your pen runs out of ink, because we’re going to, not only we’re going to ask it, we’re going to, you know, we’re going to explain it, we’re going to ask it. We’re gonna ask people to explain their why. And it’s really a kind of underlying theme of this whole course is like, let’s figure out why. Let’s tell people why. And let’s develop relationships around that question.
Josh (24:38):
So this is kind of a selfish question on my behalf, but as an owner, I feel like if I’ve got it, maybe there are some other owners out there that have it too. You’re really adept at getting these coaches that come through your course to make content. And whether it’s good or bad, like some content is better than no content in my book is an owner, right? What are you doing that we’re not doing as owners to get them to make content?
Mike (25:07):
Good question. You got a softball question and a selfish question. I’m excited to see what comes next. Tough ones are up next. I’ll give you a great example. My son, I mean, just thinking outside the box a little bit, I’m an outside party, I’m a third party, right. And I hold them accountable and that’s a big thing for social media, the accountability, but I’ll give you an example out of my own family life is my son is eight years old. He’s a really, really good mountain biker. And he doesn’t listen to me, right. Because we ride together all the time. You know, dad only knows so much.
Mike (25:48):
And he’s getting faster than me anyway. So it’s, but we put them in this mountain bike program and I kind of tagged along with the back and the coach or the leader was saying to them, you know, stuff I’ve been saying to him the whole time and all of a sudden he’s going, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But I think sometimes having that third party outside of the gym environment helps, I hold them accountable. That I need to see those three pieces before we move on to the quiz at the end. And there’s really nothing to stop them from writing the quiz anyway. But I think there’s that relationship that’s been developed by that point that they want to come through on the requirements of the course. But what I’ll often do is if I really get into that social media content creation piece with a coach, and I don’t, I’ll be completely honest.
Mike (26:35):
I don’t do it with everybody. You know, there’s some coaches who come through where we really want to focus on other areas. They might want to focus more on, you know, we on some real basic programming and talking about the STEM model in module three, for a lot of coaches, that’s a real leaping off point. You know, we do talk about the social media stuff, but some of them we’ll dive right into it. You know, I had, we talked about a coach today where our first two calls were really about that coach making those connections in the community, getting himself known, you know, talking about the authority ladder and things like that. So, I will reach out to the gym owner and I would say a gym owner who has somebody come through has those expectations, right? You would probably like it if I produced more content for Two-Brain Coaching, but there’s not that expectation for me to say, Hey, Josh has told me, I would love for you to produce three pieces of content per week. Here I go. I’m going to be.
Josh (27:38):
Hold on a second. Let me make a little note here, Mike, I’ve got your 6k trail run time and now produce three pieces of content a week.
Mike (27:47):
Some solid takeaways. Yeah. But yeah, I think if there’s that expectation, it’s hard to do, right. You know this, and I know this, there are some people, Chris Cooper is prolific at it, but it wasn’t easy when he started, he wrote every single day and coming up with stuff to write every single day is tough, he’s built an empire on that writing every single day, you know? So there are some great strategies to say, Hey, I’m going to schedule this all out. I’m going to pick a day, you know, each week I’m going to talk every day of the week or a couple of days a week. I’m going to talk about one specific thing. Maybe it’s a client testimonial on Monday. Maybe I’m going to film a video on Wednesday talking about exercise fixes. And maybe on Friday, I’m going to do some sort of inspirational, bright spot type stuff.
Mike (28:34):
It does not have to be rocket science. It doesn’t have to be a thesis on anything. It could be an article or a video where you share some knowledge or the biggest thing is what are the questions that people are asking you? If someone’s asking you this question, thousands of people are, you know, dozens of people have that same question. And even if they don’t necessarily need the answer to that question, them seeing you on a regular basis, especially as a new coach, helps them to develop that trust with you. So they say, OK, you know, I see Mike in here all the time. You know, I like the way maybe I relate to him. Maybe I don’t relate to him, you know, but they get to develop that relationship with you the way that we get to develop the relationship on the other side with them. So, for the owners really set that expectation and you can set that up in your, you know, your SOPs and things like that, because I really think people will shy away from it if they don’t have to do it, but if they don’t have to do it, they will start doing it out of panic because they’re not getting clients.
Josh (29:34):
Yeah. That’s a really good point. And I, and I love the perspective of kind of like you as the course mentor kind of providing that outside perspective of like the third set of eyes, you know, as somebody that’s like asking for this thing and then holding you accountable to that thing, you know, and you know that, that’s the story about your son sticks with me, you know, because I’ve got a nine-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter, and it’s the same thing I can tell them, you know, something till I’m blue in the face and then somebody else comes along and says the same thing and they’re like, oh man, thanks. I never knew that. It’s like, I just sat there and told you that for the last six months.
Mike (30:11):
Yeah. Yeah. The beautiful thing about the mentorship side of things too, is it is almost like that therapist or bartender kind of role where we can talk about stuff as a neutral third party to a certain degree to say, you know, my owner’s asking me to do this and I’m uncomfortable doing this, you know, and there’s never, ever been anything bad, but it’s like, Hey, how can we reframe this? So you both get what you want. Right. Oe you know, if they’re seeing one coach do something and they want to know if that’s a good approach to take, or they feel like they should approach it differently, we can have those conversations. Because it is that neutral, you know, there’s that trust, that I’m certainly not going to go, you know, typing on an email right away to say, this coach has got some questions. We want them to have questions. Right. And especially if you’re one of these coaches who’s new to coaching and this is your first experience, you know, you’ve been new in a job before and you’re like, is this the way things are supposed to work everywhere? You don’t know that. Right. So to have somebody like Shawn and Jen and Colm and I that they can talk to and say, is this normal what I’m doing when I’m experiencing, have you seen this before? Have you screwed this up before? The answer is usually yes, right?
Josh (31:29):
Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. We all have, and if you’re saying no, I haven’t, you just haven’t coached long enough.
Mike (31:35):
Yeah.
Josh (31:37):
- So the third kind of, you know, avatar that I wanted to turn our attention to was obviously, I see everybody that comes through the course in terms of names and gyms that they have come from, and I’ve seen that there are groups of coaches from the same gym. So that’s really remarkable to me. Of course, I’m super proud of that, but I kind of want to get your perspective. What are you seeing, you know, from the first coach to the second, to the third, like trends, you know, what can owners maybe be on the lookout for? I just wanted to get your thoughts.
Mike (32:14):
It’s always fun when we get a run of coaches from a gym, because it means they’ve seen a real value in the service and there’s been a bunch of them. So they see that value, but they also know that what’s coming back to the gym is pretty cool quality, right? They’ve made a good decision based on the coach they hired, we’ve reinforced that by reaching out to them and saying, Hey, you know, working with coach A has been great. They’ve got a great future. Here’s what they can focus on. The real amazing thing is when we start to talk to the second or the third coach down the line, and there’s almost like this mentorship component where the mentee becomes the mentor to the next group of coaches down the line. So we just talked to a lady today who said, you know, I talked to Greg who had taken the course a couple of months ago and he was like, I’m going to walk you through the whole thing.
Mike (33:06):
You know, I’ve been through and I know exactly what to expect and here’s how we’re going to work through it together. And I’ll mentor you through the course. It’s almost like we’re creating this leadership ladder to say, Hey, we’re all gonna help each other out. Cause really, I mean the underlying thing aside from why of our courses, like how can we help each other, right. How can we help each other get what we all need? It’s become a real cool, you know, I don’t know what the word for it is. Kind of like a legacy type thing where, you know, the coaches coming through and saying, Hey, I’ve been through this, I’m going to show you. Mike showed me because he’s been through it. I’m going to show you because I’ve been through it. And then it really kind of developed a nice cohesive team.
Mike (33:49):
The other way that gyms do this as well. And I’ve always been a strong believer that if you have to teach something to somebody, you will remember it for the rest of your life, stand up in front of the class and rhyme off Krebs cycle. You’re going to remember that thing. And I could probably do it right now. I’m not going to do it for you though. But I’ve had coaches who have said to me, as they go through the course, and this is not something we require whatsoever, but they’ll come back to their staff meetings and teach them what they learned. And so it just further reinforces like, Hey, you’re not just cruising through these modules and having these casual conversations with your mentor, we want to know what, A what you learned, but we want you to practice being competent, showing us what you learned. Right. And that’s another thing we, you and I have talked about before with, you know, other certifications, because I’ve come back from, you know, other certifications with the binder and the knowledge, and it tends to stick with you unless you sit down on purpose and tell everybody here’s what I learned. And here’s what’s valuable to us as a team, right? And that’s, I mean, it is a team, right? And that really is a kind of a team.
Chris (35:00):
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Josh (35:39):
I think what, what is super cool about that is I think about one of the things that we’ve highlighted a number of different times, you know, on podcast conversations and kind of backroom talk that we’ve had. But one of the challenges that coaches have is just being confident that they know is enough to be effective, to help the client get what it is that they came to the gym for. Right. And so now I can imagine, you know, they go through the course, they come out with more confidence, well now, somebody else at their gym goes through and they can kind of, you know, become even more confident as a way to kind of help, you know, shepherd them through the course. And then it just continues to flow all the way back through.
Josh (36:28):
And in the meantime, of course, now I’m thinking as a gym owner, is what is this doing? It’s reinforcing so much, right? It’s not only reinforcing the confidence and the competence in the coaches, but the language they’re all speaking the same language because that can certainly become a challenge. If one coach has done, you know, ABC certification and everybody else has done XYZ, you know, if principles aren’t in line, the language is going to be vastly, vastly different. So when you get a group of coaches, you know, that now really control whatever the language is at your gym, man. I just think of how powerful that becomes for the culture and the brand of the gym at large. Right.
Mike (37:16):
And your members, aren’t, you know, your members are smart people right there. They know when there’s a cohesive approach to what we’re delivering. And they know when there’s factions in the group. Right. You know, coach A told me, you got to squat this way. And coach B is saying, no, that’s the wrong way. And that’s a toxic environment, but when everybody’s pulling in the same direction and speaking that same language, for sure, it’s a culture thing from the top down that we’re all driving at the same thing together. Right?
Josh (37:44):
Yeah. I’ll share a funny story with you. So years ago, when I was still coaching, you know, on the daily at my gym and I was evaluating the other coaches, one of the things that used to drive me nuts is seeing them call something that I had done a different name and not because it was like, this is the name and it’s my world or my way or the highway. But it was because I could see the look of confusion on the clients’ faces. When I said something different or the other coach said something different from me. And so what it ended up doing is I called up our videographer at the time. I said, Hey, can you come in one weekend? Give me like two, three hours of your time. I’ll pay you. And he said, sure, what do you want to do? I said, just hit record when I say record and stop when I say stop, and we were in there for about three hours and shot like a hundred something videos of every movement, uploaded them all to YouTube. It took a little bit, but uploaded everything to YouTube, broke it all down names, how to execute it and said, study this. This is how we name and teach everything. And it was, it was a game changer because now if somebody at the 5:00 AM, coach said something, it was the same thing if a client came to 5:00 AM or 7:00 PM.
Mike (39:01):
Yeah, yeah. It’s nice that coaches can have their own personality and their delivery, but the methods should be the same. We don’t want them to be robots. We want them to have personality. We hire them because of their personalities.
Josh (39:14):
That’s. Yeah, you’re exactly right. And I can remember, you know, so many conversations with my coaches to that point is like, I do not want you to be a carbon copy of me. The system that we teach needs to be consistent. The principles behind the system need to be consistent. But the jokes that you tell, you know, the, all those things like that’s what makes you you, and that’s why I hired you is because of you. I didn’t hire you to be me. So make sure that you do that.
Mike (39:45):
Yeah. When I was out on my run today, I ran with one of our other coaches, Dennis who’s, he’s got a real niche for coaching, like the older population kind of 55, 60 and over. And we were talking about the idea. This is how, you know it was a casual run. Cause we were talking. He was saying how neat he found it. And I’ve made this comment to a lot of coaches in the course, but it’s really cool when you hear somebody else use the language you use to describe something, but it’s equally as exciting when you hear one of the new coaches, you know, for a complicated movement, like a snatch or a clean, and you hear somebody from across the room, explain it in such a way that you have never done before. And it’s so simple and it clicks like that’s exciting. Cause I know now I’m going to start using that language. So certainly having the personality and teaching it in a cohesive way is nice, but bringing everybody’s input to that and allowing them to be their personality and their way of delivering that message is always kind of, it’s fun. Right? Sometimes you forget you used to describe something in a way that was really, really, really good. And you lost your wording somewhere. It’s always cool to come back to it.
Josh (41:00):
Yeah. That’s always a really cool thing to me. When you see obviously if a coach is teaching something, the way that you taught them to teach it, but then when they start to develop their own voice, you know, and then they’re teaching you, it’s like, OK, you know, now we’re really, really moving in the right direction. We’ve got some momentum going. Yeah.
Mike (41:24):
Yeah. It seems like a big ask, but I really think there’s a lot of coaches who come through that three modules that we do and the three mentor calls and they go from having a quiet voice to being a confident voice or much more close to the ideal that they want to hit the floor running with.
Josh (41:42):
Yeah. I think that’s a good place, man, to leave it, that confidence piece. That’s I think that’s such a missing link for so many coaches. So hopefully they take that for what it’s worth and you know, we covered a lot of different avatars. So, Mike, thank you as always. Is there any parting words that you would like to leave the folks with?
Mike (42:05):
No, if oyu have any other questions, Mike@twobraincoaching.com. I’m always happy to chat with gym owners or coaches who are potentially interested in talking about their individual experience and what they would get out of the course. I’m always happy to chat. I know Josh is always happy to chat about the course as well, but we just want to help you develop world-class coaches. And if there’s any way we can help do that, we’re here for that. And we’ll keep Josh accountable on his run. Follow up with him on social media for his Strava times at some point this week.
Josh (42:39):
The next time that I post about a running time will be the first time. Until next time. It’s always great talking to you, Mike. Thanks again, man.
Chris (42:55):
Chris Cooper here. Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. If you aren’t in the Gym Owners United group on Facebook, this is my personal invitation to join. It’s the only public Facebook group that I participate in and I’m in there all the time with tips, tactics, and free resources. I’d love to network with you and help you grow your business. Join Gym Owners United on Facebook.
