Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Have you ever been mad at a coach? Like really, really mad? Yeah, we’ve all been there. And sometimes a coach needs to go to improve your product. So how do you know when the problem is solvable and when a coach needs to be fired? You’re going to find out today on “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Before we go further, please hit “subscribe” so you do not miss a show. My guest today is a former gym owner. He’s one of Two-Brain’s most experienced mentors. Josh Martin is also the big wheel at The Refined Art of Coaching, so he’s got particular insight into this exact topic. Josh, welcome to the show.
Josh Martin (00:34):
Mike, thank you so much. I’m glad to be back. I always love talking to you.
Mike Warkentin (00:38):
Yeah, and I love talking to you because you are one of our most long-term mentors. There’s a few of you guys left; Greg Strauch is another one, and it’s really cool to see people that have been in this industry, the mentorship industry, for such a long time. And I know that you have a particular passion for coaching and coach development. So, we’re going to talk about some of the things when maybe you can’t develop, maybe you have to fire, and maybe you can save someone. So, let’s get right into it. So, here’s the story. I had to part ways with a coach one time. I didn’t want to, but I made the move when I realized that my clients could see a deficiency. It was obvious, and I was like, “Whoa, I have to make a move here.” I had to do something because my product was suffering. So, let me ask you this: How do you know with absolute certainty when it’s time to part ways with a coach? Like, is this going to be a feeling, a poor evaluation, one incident? What do you—how do you know?
Josh Martin (01:24):
Oh, man. So, this is a topic that as you’re reading the intro, like I just start to sweat a little bit. Only because I’ve done it wrong, terribly wrong, before, and so I can share that. But when do you know it’s time? I think one of the hallmark things for me when I knew it was time, in terms of absolute certainty, is when something is done that is very against the values that we have established for the gym. I think that’s a big one. I’ve heard people share stories of theft at the gym or sleeping with the members or the other coaches or something like that. I think that’s a tremendous red flag. But as you were talking, one of the things where I knew it was probably time to make that move is every time I would pull in to park at my gym, and I knew that coach was there, I would just get this uneasy feeling in my stomach, and I couldn’t put a finger on it. And I talked to one of my mentors about it at the time, and we kind of worked our way through it. But to me, the big red flag is something that is basically antithetical to our values.
Mike Warkentin (02:30):
OK, so you’ve got the first thing, and it could be an incident; it could be something where someone does something. So, outside your code of conduct and standards for employees or staff members, that is a kill shot. This cannot stand; you’ve stolen from the business, or you’ve just broken some major rule. But then I’m going to guess there’s probably also a situation where it’s maybe not one incident; it’s just maybe like repeated incidents where you’re like, “This person is just not on board with our vision.” And maybe that’s something that you have to feel out a little bit, but it probably results in that feeling that you had where it’s like, “I’m sitting in the parking lot, sweaty palms, queasy stomach. I do not want to deal with this person.” So, you’ve probably got those two things, and we’re going to get into some of the evaluations and things like that because we’re talking about feelings, but there are also ways for you to document this stuff, get out front of it, and then figure out: What are some objective measurements?
Mike Warkentin (03:20):
Is this person on board? But the feeling is important because for me, it was the same thing where I started to know, members would start to say like, “Ah, this coach seems not really on the page,” and there’s little comments like that. And I was like, “Oh boy.” And then when I started hearing more of that, I knew that someone was not working according to our vision. So, exactly what you said. So, let’s go on to this. Protecting your product, and your product at your gym is essentially your coaching and your programming. So how do you do that? How do you ensure that your coaches are hitting standards, and when is it clear that a coach is actually damaging the product?
Josh Martin (03:53):
Well, number one, I think that it’s important that you establish what the standard is because I don’t know if there’s any gym owners like I was at the time, but I knew what it was in my head because I was just being me. And I’d show up at a certain time, I would say a certain thing I would coach a certain way, so I was the standard for myself. And so, it was easy for me, quote unquote, to live up to it. But what I recognized when I started bringing other coaches on is I never actually told them, took the time to tell them, to your point, which you were mentioning earlier, is like, “Here’s the objective standard.” Right, now, we have the subjective stuff too, but the objective standard is: What time did you show up? Did you coach everybody who was in the class? Did you say these things? Did you brief the whiteboard? Like, all of those things are part of the objective standard. I think it’s important, number one, that you just do that. So that would be like step one in terms of protecting the product, is you have to define what it actually is. Otherwise, in my case, it was really unfair to the coaches who were at the gym at the time, for me to have an expectation on them that they were never clear on.
Mike Warkentin (05:02):
Yeah. Like it’s ultimately your fault, right? Like you can’t expect them to read what’s in your head. I had the same problem. And if they’re not measuring up to standards that you haven’t communicated, it’s your fault.
Josh Martin (05:12):
Yeah, I mean it, even to hear you say it that way, it’s like, “Well, they were living up to some sort of standards, but nobody was actually clear on what they were.” So, I think that that’s number one is you have to have those set. You have to let them know that like, “Hey, this is the way that we do things here. This is how you’re going to be evaluated and graded against this standard.” And then making sure, again, this was like—once I did that, then I realized the next step for me was when they’re not clearly hitting these, is actually having that conversation, which was terribly difficult for me. I didn’t want to make anybody upset or anything, but I had a very similar scenario to you where clients were pulling me aside, or I would be at a local restaurant in the community, and a fellow business owner would come over and say like, “Hey, I just wanted to let you know owner to owner, this person is not hitting the standard that we have come to expect with you.” And so that was a big thing for me where it was like, “OK, another business owner who I respect their opinion on was seeing similar things.” And then I started to recognize them, and then it’s time to have the conversation.
Mike Warkentin (06:25):
Yeah. And that’s when someone says something to you like that, it’s a kick in the crotch as a business owner, because you know they’re trying to help; they’re not being a jerk about it. They’re just saying, “Hey, I think you need to know this,” and you have this sneaking suspicion. All of a sudden, it’s like, “Oh, this is a horrible thing now.” Listeners, I’ll give you a couple of tips right here, but get it out of your head. Right? I can’t say that enough. Chris has blogged about this, Chris Cooper, a number of times. People cannot read your mind. And Chris’s famous story is that he told a cleaner to clean the gym or mop the floors, and the cleaner did, but he didn’t put soap in the bucket because Chris didn’t say, “Put soap in the bucket.” It’s an extreme example, but your staff members aren’t going to know every procedure.
Mike Warkentin (07:00):
Another example that Chris has used is on time for Chris is 15 minutes early; on time for a coach might be two minutes after nine, and that’s not when the class starts. So, you have to document everything precisely and let people know that these are the standards that you will be held to. The best way to do that is through career roadmap sections or whatever you want to call them. But it’s a session where you’re going to sit down with a coach regularly, and you’re going to talk to them about their goals and aspirations and also the standards. Give them an evaluation checklist. I’m going to put a link to a sample one in the show notes. Give them an evaluation checklist when you hire them, and tell them, “This is what you are held to. This is what 10 means. This is what one means.”
Mike Warkentin (07:36):
“We’re going to review it.” And I’m going to give you one final tip. This is a really good one—not from me; this is from Oskar and Chris: Give them something. Tell them in every career roadmap meeting, you are going to give them one thing to work on no matter what. So that means in every session they go in expecting you to tell them we’re going to focus on improving one thing. So, it’s not necessarily, “I’m furious with you, and you are going to work on this because it sucks.” It’s, “I told you we were going to work on one thing, so we’re going to work on this, and you’re going to be on time 15 minutes before 9 a.m.” Right? So, that’s what I’m getting at there. Josh, did you do career roadmaps or any evaluations, and if so, how often did you do them with your staff?
Josh Martin (08:15):
Yeah, so, we certainly did do them. Once I recognized, through the help of a mentor, that, “Hey, number one, you didn’t have any standards set. Number two, you need to let them know. And then number three, you need to actually meet with them.” So, when we first introduced it, we did them quarterly. So, we would sit down with people, figure out, “Hey, this is the evaluation. Let’s go over it. Let’s give you something to work on,” but then we actually over time, as our staff, you know, stayed longer and longer and longer, we’ve recognized that it wasn’t valuable to do them quarterly when they first came on, it was super, super important. But as they got better and better, we actually extended the time out. So, we moved from quarterly to doing it twice a year.
Josh Martin (08:58):
And that really seemed to work well for us, just so that we could give them time to put these things into practice and actually make progress. I will say one thing though: One of the things that I recognized after I realized I had to set standards and then start to evaluate people and meet with them, is the standards that I was holding them to were the standards that I had for myself. I mean, I’ve been coaching for 22 years, and so when I would bring a new coach in, that was my standard, and it was incredibly unfair that they would have all the knowledge and people skills and all the stuff that really like makes me me or makes a great coach a great coach, that they would have it from day one. And so again, another mentor of mine said, “Hey, you’re setting a standard that your people are never going to live up to until they’ve been in the game for a decade or more.” And so, you need to kind of give them these milestones to hit, and let them know, number one, we do have an attitude that you’re going to pursue excellence, but also with a dose of grace and humility that—like you’re a brand-new coach; I’m not expecting you to be all the way here. We are expecting you to at least be here, but be working to get better.
Mike Warkentin (10:15):
Yeah. So, reasonable expectations is a big one. I love what you said that you qualified, that as your staff changes, your process might evolve. And that’s totally fine. If you have coaches who have been with you for 10 years, you may not have to meet with them every two months for a career roadmap. It may be every six months is more appropriate. It’s super interesting, some of the stuff you mentioned there. If you’re out there listening and you have coaches, know that you can fix some stuff, but you can’t fix everything all at once. I was the one where I’m like, “I’ve got this laundry list of stuff, and I want to fix every single thing, and I hit them with …,” and it doesn’t work like that. The best thing you can do is pick one major area of focus and hit that hard.
Mike Warkentin (10:55):
And the key to this is, a lot of Two-Brain mentors have said this, you hire for personality and train for skill. That means you find people who are excellent people, willing to learn; they buy into your vision. They have these soft skills where they just relate to people. They have empathy. They can communicate. Those things. It’s harder to teach. You can teach them, but it’s much harder. They’re likable. Then you take those people, and you add on the coaching skills where it’s like, “Here’s how you teach a squat. Here’s how you sign people into class,” and all the other little things that you can just tack on. But the key is that you can’t just laundry list that and say you’re going to work on everything all at once. It’s very difficult and overwhelming for even the best people. Pick areas of focus. And Oskar Johed, one of our top coach trainers, he is on CrossFit Level 1 Seminar Staff, runs a great gym in Sweden, has talked about an area of focus. So don’t give people laundry lists. Try and get them to hit certain things. Josh, when you’ve evaluated coaches and found deficiencies, not the stuff that’s like fireable offenses, but just like, “Ah, you’re just not quite great at that.” Have you had a lot of success in moving people along at a reasonable pace that made you happier and get them closer to your standards?
Josh Martin (12:00):
Yes and no. I say no in the sense that when I wasn’t able to do that, it was again—I know we sound like a broken record here—but it was because I wasn’t making things clear enough for them. And the other thing that I wasn’t doing was getting them to understand why this was so important, not just to their success, but more so the success of our clients. So, if we do this really well, then this is the benefit to the client. Instead, what I was doing is pointing something out and saying, “You need to get better at that.” And I would stop there. And they’re like, “OK, he’s just pointing out a character flaw or a deficiency in my coaching without taking it an extra step.” So, the transition, again, when I figured that out through the help of a mentor, then that’s when they actually started making progress and getting better as coaches, because we all want to do better at the service that we are providing because we are serving people. And so, when I could help them make that connection, then all of a sudden, they would get better.
Mike Warkentin (13:01):
So that’s giving them an emotional reason to care, right? Where it’s like, “Hey, you’re five minutes late and what that means is that Tom, Cindy, and John couldn’t come to class because they got to the door, and it was locked. They knew they were going to be late for work because everything was behind. They just left. They didn’t train today, and they didn’t get closer to their goals because you were late.” And again, that’s that emotional reason where you’re like, “I have affected other people with my actions. I need to improve them.” And same thing Chris has used the example, if you don’t take the garbage out, it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but that means that the morning coach who’s rushed and has other duties has to clean up after you, and she’s going to be frazzled before she starts a whiteboard brief because you left banana peels in the garbage. Right? So, that’s that emotional reason to care. So, I like that. And I’m going to—so let’s move into—so, those are some of the saveable things. You found people who you could start moving them along this process. Have you ever had to fire a coach, and how did it go? What are some of the things—because everybody out there is going to want to know—what do I do?
Josh Martin (13:58):
Yes. I’ve had to fire coaches in the past.
Mike Warkentin (14:02):
How’d you do it?
Josh Martin (14:03):
Terrible a couple of times. And pretty good a couple of times.
Mike Warkentin (14:09):
OK, tell me both.
Josh Martin (14:10):
So we’ll start with a pretty good—again, this is because of lessons learned. The pretty good ones were, we talked about this at the very top of the podcast where it was egregious, it was right in the face of our values, and this was very clear cut. I just had a sit-down conversation with this person, “Look, this is what happened. We will not be continuing with your employment. We wish you nothing but the best.” And then, no hard feelings, nothing. But it was just, “We’re going to move on,” and we pick up the pieces and go.
Mike Warkentin (14:40):
You didn’t wear pants to class, dude.
Josh Martin (14:43):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like, you know, come on. Yeah. So, that was one where it was super clear to the point, and you’ll notice a pattern here. Very few words. It was very cut and dry, and we just parted ways.
Mike Warkentin (14:57):
And did it go OK?
Josh Martin (14:58):
Yeah, it was fine. I mean, they weren’t happy. But at the same time, you can’t argue with this. You did the thing. We talked about: “This was the standard. You clearly were in violation of it. We’re going to part ways.”
Mike Warkentin (15:11):
So, that was a kill shot. That’s kind of an easy one, even though it still sucks.
Josh Martin (15:14):
Yeah, exactly. Super easy. The kind of sitting in the middle is—I’m sure so many gym owners can relate to this—you have a coach who is responsible for the first class of the day. Say it starts at 5:30, and they miss it. Now, that’s not a one time, like you miss it one time and you’re out, but it’s a, “Hey, we’re going to have a conversation. Strike one.” It got to a point where they had missed several and just cannot have that happen. And so, we off-boarded them, and this one was simple because the only opportunity they had to coach for us at the time was first thing in the morning. So, we just took them off the schedule, right?
Mike Warkentin (15:50):
Oh yeah. So that’s just like the opportunity has gone away.
Josh Martin (15:53):
Exactly. There’s no more opportunity. And it wasn’t just like, “Hey, let’s quietly take them off the schedule.” No, we’re going to have the conversation. “Look, we’re not going to put you on the schedule any longer because we can’t count on you being here. It has nothing to do with your coaching, but we actually don’t know what kind of coach you can blossom into if you don’t show up for the classes you’re scheduled.”
Mike Warkentin (16:14):
I’m going to ask you a detailed question. I’m going to jump and ask you a detailed question. Were your coaches contractors or staff members or some combination?
Josh Martin (16:22):
Contractors. Contractors.
Mike Warkentin (16:22):
OK, there you go. So, then you have an opportunity there where a contract expires, and you can kind of be like, “I’m not renewing this contract. Thank you.” You know? Yep. So that’s a little bit of an easier conversation too. You may be able to wait someone out, but you may not if the offense is egregious enough. So, keep that in mind.
Josh Martin (16:38):
I’m glad you brought that up because in my position, mentoring gym owners at Two-Brain, you can imagine, “How do I deal with problematic staff?” comes up all the time. And so, we will give them this advice, or they’ll ask about my personal experience, kind of like we’re talking about here. But when it comes to removing a staff member, I always tell them, “You need to check your local laws because I don’t know what they are wherever you’re living, and that’s your responsibility to look into that.” Now we can certainly provide them some direction and guidance and places to go to find these things, but at the end of the day, you have to own that and take that responsibility on yourself.
Mike Warkentin (17:17):
Good plan. I like it. So those are the two that went pretty well. Am I right?
Josh Martin (17:22):
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Warkentin (17:22):
OK. Let’s move on into some of the horror stories potentially.
Josh Martin (17:25):
So, the last one, at least this was the worst one for me, was somebody who had been a longtime coach, great, developed our youth program, really kind of took it from a really great youth program to just we had an infinite wait list for our kids program and was truly a wonderful coach. Something happened in this person’s life, and I won’t go into details or anything, but they just started working their way out of being involved in the community. And then I started to hear—this was from other coaches and clients, and then from myself—that they were talking poorly about the gym, talking poorly about me and my leadership, which is all fair. Like, I’ve got no issues with that because a perfect leader, I’m certainly not.
Josh Martin (18:13):
And you will come to understand this when I tell you this story. Finally, I had talked to my general manager, and we agreed I needed to remove this person. It was my responsibility to do so. So, on the back end while we made this decision, we were figuring out: How are we going to cover all of this person’s responsibilities? What does it look like to remove them? What’s the communication with the rest of the staff and then the clients at large going to be? So, we had all that in place. The only thing that needed to happen was me having this conversation. So, I reached out, said, “Hey, let’s meet up here. We’re going to go get some coffee, and we’re going to sit down and talk.” So, mistake number one was reaching out like a gesture of good faith. Like, “Hey, we’re just going to sit down, and we haven’t caught up in a while.”
Mike Warkentin (19:00):
“Oh, Josh is going to fire me. Josh is going to fire me.”
Josh Martin (19:04):
Yeah, I didn’t couch it that way. I just couched it as like, “Hey man, let’s catch up.”
Mike Warkentin (19:08):
No, I could smell what you’re cooking though.
Josh Martin (19:10):
Golly. And so, we’re catching up. How’s the family? How is this? How is that? And then started to get into like, “Hey how are things going? How do you think things are going at the gym?” “Well …” and I knew that there was some stuff that he really wanted to let off of his chest, so I kept poking and poking, and finally, I guess I struck a nerve, and he exploded. I mean, just started kind of tearing into me, tearing into the business, how unhappy he was; it’s been a long time coming. And I said, “OK, well, it doesn’t sound like you’re happy here, so why don’t we just end it like right now?” And he’s like, “So wait a minute. So, are you firing me?” I was like, “Well, I think you just fired yourself, and so go ahead and give me your key, and we’ll cut bait and walk away right now.” And it was just not a pretty scene. It was something that I’m still just incredibly embarrassed about. And it was bad, man. I mean, it just was not great, how I handled that. The communication was not as smooth as we had thought that it was going to be. And it just was not a great time for me at all.
Mike Warkentin (20:17):
Well, even though you’re banned from that Starbucks for life, I am going to throw this idea at you that may put your mind at ease. There is a school of thought that says that maybe you could have handled it better, but that wasn’t maybe the worst approach in the world. And do you remember the Chris Voss presentation at the Two-Brain Summit a few years back? He talked about popping the anger balloon. And so having a conversation and poking someone to let out that steam, and obviously you had to ask a few questions, but once you did, this coach let you have it and let out all the stuff that was in there and essentially fired themself. And I’m not saying that you have to do that, but there is a school of thought that says that in some situations you can do this and really get to the root of the problem where it becomes obvious to both sides.
Mike Warkentin (20:54):
And maybe it wasn’t quite obvious to this coach, but it becomes obvious that this is not a good fit. So that’s one approach that I think is interesting, and it maybe blew up in your face a little bit, but at the same time, it does work at times. And Chris Voss has talked about this in negotiating, letting the anger out, poking the balloon, and letting a little bit more air out, more air out, more air out. And eventually it’s—this is an obvious parting of the ways. The other thing, Amber Cooper, she’s our Operations Director, she has tons of HR experience—I was asking about this very topic for a blog that we’re creating. She said, “The best thing you can do is just be very blunt and upfront and say, ‘I’ve made my decision. It’s final, and we’re parting ways,’” and you just go into it right from the start.
Mike Warkentin (21:33):
So you did the opposite where you kind of soft sold it, but you did go through that Chris Voss process. So, that’s not a criticism. But the other approach is to come up and say, “I’ve made a decision. We’re parting ways. It’s final,” and then you might get some blowback in discussion, but you’ve already stated the main thing right away, and you don’t have to have to hem and haw around it. So, let me ask you this. If you were going to fire a client or a coach right now, which approach would you use? How would you do it?
Josh Martin (21:56):
I would take the more direct route for sure. I see it as like this: There’s these two opposite ends of kind of the firing spectrum. I know that sounds terrible, but there’s the very short direct—there’s this great scene. Have you seen Moneyball with Brad Pitt about the Oakland A’s?
Mike Warkentin (22:11):
Yeah, yeah. You’re a baseball guy. You’ve seen that.
Josh Martin (22:12):
Yeah, I’ve seen—anytime it’s on, my wife will joke, I’ll watch that movie. Just, I love it. But there’s this scene where he’s sitting in the manager’s office at the time and one of the guys comes in and he hands him a piece of paper, “Hey, Jeremy, you’ve been traded to the Giants. Talk to Steve. He’s got your travel arrangements. We wish you nothing but the best.” Right? So, there’s that approach, very minimal words. And then there’s the approach that I think I took where I wanted to make it a nice thing. I wanted to make it like a soft-landing type. And I think it was actually Coop who told me more words don’t necessarily make people feel better in instances like this. So, for me, I’ve went through kind of both of these, and I felt much better, and it just felt more natural to just be very direct, to the point and then part ways.
Mike Warkentin (23:01):
Yeah. And sometimes the “more words don’t make a better thing” is so true. And again, someone asks you for a discount, Chris’s easiest response: “No, we don’t have discounts here.” Simple, direct, final, end of discussion. But if you start saying, “Well, we used to have discounts for military people and some for teachers, and are you one of those?” And you start hemming and hawing, and all of a sudden, it sounds very defensive and awkward. Sometimes just getting it out of the way, and you think about maybe relationships, listeners, girlfriends, boyfriends, whatever: “We’re breaking up.” You say that, and then at least the hard part is done. It’s like, “Things haven’t been going well for a while.” And the hemming and hawing doesn’t really do anyone any favors. So, there are different approaches to this, but in Amber’s words, she advised, being very direct, obviously check your local laws and so forth, but then saying like, “I’ve made this decision. It’s final.” There’s no room for negotiation there. That person may want to negotiate, but you’re just like, “I’ve made this decision. We’re parting ways,” and so on and so forth. So those are a couple of approaches that you’ve had, Josh. And I asked some Two-Brain mentors about firing and wow, there is some crazy, crazy stuff that goes on out there. Like we had a—
Josh Martin (24:08):
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Warkentin (24:09):
… where mentors were just posting some horror stories of their own businesses and things they’ve had to deal with in the past. Things can get weird. So, you may in some cases want to even get some legal counsel on some of this stuff. Again, Josh advised you wisely. Check all local laws. If you’re uncertain of something, do it. You may want to check with legal counsel just to make sure that everything is cool. Now I’m going to ask you this. So, we’ve talked about firing. Let’s pull back from firing. Let’s talk about saveable. So, let’s say that someone is just not performing up to standards. Like what are the signs for you that a coach is saveable versus like, “Ah, I’m just—I think I’m trading this person, or I’m cutting this person off the team”?
Josh Martin (24:47):
Yeah, I think it’s important to remember that we’re in a people business, right? Like these are human beings that we’re—they’re not robots where it’s like, “Uh, the robot broke. Let’s just put them out to pasture, and he is done.” So, I think there’s that recognition first. I think the next thing that you need to do is reflect in the mirror to yourself: “Have I set a standard? Have I made it clear? Have I also made sure that when I handed them this standard that they understood it and agreed to it? And then have I regularly evaluated them?” Like basically you’re trying to uncover: Have I done my part to invest into this person? Because what I learned is there’s a difference between delegation and abdication. Abdication is like, “Here’s our staff playbook. Go learn it. High five, and I’ll see you in six months.” Delegation is where you’ve got the process, you have a training protocol, you follow it, and so that would be step number one is: Did I check those boxes?
Mike Warkentin (25:47):
So you’re evaluating essentially your leadership.
Josh Martin (25:50):
Yourself, yeah.
Mike Warkentin (25:51):
And your processes. Right now, before you do it, that’s what you’re doing is you’re evaluating, “Did I put processes in place? Am I being a good leader?” And if it’s yes in both cases, then you can start looking at the person. Keep going.
Josh Martin (26:03):
Yeah. And so, then it’s OK, I’ve done these things, and they’re still not getting better. The next thing that I would do is just sit down with them and have a human-to-human conversation: “Hey, you’ve been here for X time. We’ve clearly established these standards, and you’re not hitting them. Can you help me understand why?” And again, this is where I would actually default to the more Chris Voss, “pop the emotional balloon,” approach, where I’m trying to dig into their life because I care about them and find out, “Hey, take the gym out of this. I just want to know, at home, how are things going with the kids?” You know, you remember something, that their kids were traveling to a tournament. How did that go? Trying to find out: What are the things that are not allowing you to focus on getting better here?
Josh Martin (26:54):
And then if you do come across that, like, “Hey, I totally understand that. Do you think that this is something that you can also have on your plate right now? Or would removing this from your plate—not that it would be a failure; I don’t want you to think of it as that—but would removing your responsibilities of coaching allow you to improve things at home?” Because if they’re not happy at home, I don’t want them bringing that here. Not because I don’t want it to damage the product. I mean, that’s part of it. But really my heart is I want you to be happy. And if part of being happy is not doing this thing at the gym, that’s OK. So, I think you want to go down that road, and then if it’s like, “No, everything’s fine,” and they’re just not invested in it, again, this is where then I think you can be direct and say, “OK, well maybe we need to think about a different responsibility for you.”
Mike Warkentin (27:47):
Yeah, Chris had a great line, and he said it was asking a coach, “Do you still want to do this?” And that’s a really powerful one because some coaches will be like, “No.” And maybe they were waiting, they didn’t know how to tell you that, right? So that opportunity, that discussion, is really important. I want to backtrack. You just said a really important thing. Asking people why they’re not hitting the standard is really important. And let’s use an example and say that coach who’s late every morning: Maybe her son broke his foot and can’t get on the school bus, and she has to drive him to school, and traffic is hell, and she can’t get there on time. And you find that out, and you’re like, “Hey, could you coach the noon class instead?” And she might be, “Oh my god. That would make my life so much easier.”
Mike Warkentin (28:23):
“I love this place. I feel so bad that I can’t get here on time, but my kid’s broken foot,” right? You can’t fault her for putting your family first. So, digging into these problems might really help you figure out: What can I do to help this person if it’s the right person who still should be on the bus? And then in other cases you’ll find that maybe they don’t want to be on the bus anyway, and they’re just waiting for you to give them a chance to open the door and stop and get out. So that’s—I thought that was great. That’s a great piece of advice, Josh. How patient should you be? So, you’re working through a process, and let’s say you’ve got a coach who’s showing improvement. Is it like—so if they’re a six, is a seven at the next meeting, OK? Or how patient are you when you’re asking people to improve stuff?
Josh Martin (28:59):
Man, I’m not a politician, and so I hate to use this answer, but you probably know what’s coming is: It depends, right? If your business is in a free fall and this coach is doing such a bad job that people are walking out left and right, like you need to rip the Band-Aid off immediately, right? But if you’re at a point in your business career to where the ship is sailing, still moving forward, you’re doing great, you’ve got this new coach or even somebody who’s got a couple of years of experience, and they’re just coming along slowly—like, if you can afford, literally afford, to be patient with this person, then I think you be patient with that person. But I think the worst thing that you can do is just not think about that ahead of time.
Josh Martin (29:45):
And what I mean is not sitting down to objectively look at, “OK, this person is making progress, but it’s very slow. Do I have the bandwidth to be invested in their long-term success?” And if yes, let them know that, and then remind yourself of that when things do get rough because there’s going to be a mistake that they make that’s going to want you to take 10 steps back and maybe remove them. But if you’ve committed to their continued development, then I think that you just communicate that to them, but also remind yourself of that as well.
Mike Warkentin (30:20):
Yeah, it makes sense. And I think—going back to what you said earlier, it depends on the person who you’re dealing with as well and the thing that you’re dealing with. So, if your area of focus is showing up on time, I would have very limited patience for anyone who shows up late three times. Like I just—that was just a kill shot for me. Those basic checklist items for me would be very hard to be patient on: You open the door at this time, you park here, you put the music on, you check people in—these systems and procedures are really not negotiable. I don’t have patience there. I think for me it’s going to be, “Did you get better? Yes or no?” And if it’s no, then you might be looking at saying like, “We’re not on the same page.”
Mike Warkentin (30:57):
“You might need to go.” If it’s something else, like we’re talking coach development and saying, “You know, you’re just not catching that. He’s not quite opening his hips at the top of a snatch.” That’s hard. And that goes back to what you’re talking about with that 22 years of coaching experience—you have that; you can see that immediately. You can probably see it in the shadow off the wall, but another coach, it might take them three or four years to get that skill. And ultimately, if they’re likable and they’re helping clients get results, that one problem is not going to be the thing that makes your business suck. Right? Would they be a better coach? Absolutely. But if they’re not quite an A+ level 10 trainer right now, you could probably work that along. But I think it comes down to the person: Are they willing to learn? Do they take feedback? Do they want to learn? Are they invested in this? Are they getting better? And even small improvements in that realm are probably going to carry a lot of weight. Do you agree with me on that?
Josh Martin (31:46):
I do. And I really do, and I’d like to share a story of a coach who kind of followed into this. We had hired a coach years ago. She came in with a number of years of experience, and she started off coaching adults, was great at that. When we had our kids program, and we needed to expand it, she put her hand up, and started coaching the kids. She also wanted to be a part of launching the teens program. So, she had quite a bit of responsibility at the gym. But very quickly we realized that coaching adults was just not her strong suit. She could show up and fit the bill, and she could check all the objective boxes, was always on time, started and ended on time, hit all the points performance, but was not a fun person to be around for the adults.
Josh Martin (32:34):
And so this is what was getting communicated. So, like the personality was just not a great fit. And so, I would have these career roadmaps—again, going back to not wanting to rock the boat too much. Like, “Hey, do you still like doing this? Or would you like to do more of the kids program? You really seem to like this.” And this went on for longer than I would care to admit Mike. “Shoot, no, no, no. I still want to continue to do the adults.” Well, after about 18 to 24 months of this, where I knew it was not a great fit, I finally had to say, “Look, this is not your strong suit.” But what I recognized is it also was not her strong suit to do the little kids.
Josh Martin (33:16):
But when she—for whatever reason, when she was around the high school and teenage kids, she would light up. I mean, she had so much fun coaching these kids. She still hit the objective boxes, but really lit up whenever she was around these high schoolers. And so, I finally had to tell her that, “Look, you don’t need to be coaching the adults. It’s clear that that is not something that you enjoy doing. And it’s clear that you don’t love coaching the little kids, but you love coaching the team. So, I’m going to take you off of these responsibilities in the moment.” I don’t think that she was terribly happy, but I could see this massive weight come off of her shoulders. And within the very first week, she was a completely different person. She showed up with a smile, loved what she was doing, did a great job of it. And this is, again, this was a long process, but didn’t have the people skills for this demographic. But in front of this one was just a rockstar.
Mike Warkentin (34:12):
So there’s a cool question, and the question is: Do I have the wrong people, or do I have the right people in the wrong seats? That’s an interesting one. It sounds like there you had a good person who was just in the wrong spot. You put her in an area where she can succeed because she’s passionate about it; you made a switch. And so, that’s a leadership skill that ultimately comes down to you because you’re making these decisions. You learned as an owner to evaluate your people and evaluate the positions and so forth, and then get the right people in the right spot so the chip goes that way as opposed to going off the rail. So that’s a really interesting story. And if you’re out there listening in your business, think about it. Do you have the wrong people, or do you have the right people, but they’re in the wrong spot?
Mike Warkentin (34:49):
And if the answer on the second one is, yeah, that’s a you problem, and you can fix that by just saying, “Hey, it really seems like you hate coaching weightlifting at 6 a.m. in the morning. Would you like to do the afternoon kid slot?” And if it’s like, “Yes,” you know—and the reason that I suggest this is when our gym started growing, I was frantic. It was just me, and it was just another person; then it was just another person. And then we needed a bunch of people, and I hired a bunch of people, I ran them all into spots, and I definitely didn’t do a good job of putting them in areas where they could succeed. And later on, I had to start backfilling and saying, “What have I done here? Have I put the wrong people in place? Or have I got them in the wrong spots? What can I do to adjust things?” Because Josh, I’m sure you’ve mentored many gym owners who are just, they’re working 60, 70 hours a week, and they’re frantic. They just start plugging holes, and sometimes you plug holes with the wrong plugs. Has that happened in your mentorship practice?
Josh Martin (35:41):
Yeah, definitely. Coaching is certainly one of the areas that we recognize very quickly in the mentoring process that they need somebody who can step into that and fill that role for them so that they can maybe A, just sleep in, get actually maybe four hours of sleep versus three. It might be B, that you want to be home with your wife and kids for dinner and bath time. I know I can personally relate to that, or it might be C, that, look, I want to continue to level up my skills as a leader and grow the gym, and I have to spend more time on sales and marketing. What I’ve realized, more often than not, the conversation that I have to have with people is, again, broken record: You have to set the expectation, but it needs to be reasonable. So often I find myself telling these owners that, “This all sounds great. You’re setting expectations, and then you’re mad that they’re not acting like a coach who’s been doing this for 10 years”
Mike Warkentin (36:37):
Yeah, it’s interesting. So, it all comes down to leadership and who you are in your entrepreneurial journey, and a mentor can help you figure that out. And I’m going to give you an interesting one too, to think about listeners: Should you hire a coach first? Or should you potentially hire some low value roles, fill some low value roles first, and then work into the higher value product delivery roles? And the interesting one here is: Is it easier to hire a great coach or a great cleaner? And my suggestion is that you can find a cleaner in about three minutes, or a great coach might take five years of development. So, you might do this exercise called the value ladder with your mentor. The simple process: Figure out all the roles that you are doing, write down all the hours you spend there, attach a dollar value, and then look at replacement costs.
Mike Warkentin (37:24):
I clean for four hours a week; I can hire a cleaner for $100, and I have four extra hours. You can work your way up through a bunch of different stuff. Eventually, you’re going to hit coaching, but you might not hire a coach first. Something to consider. Now, Josh, I really want to leave people—I always love on this show to leave people with something to do. So, let’s talk about something that they can take action on here. So, I want to talk about processes that people can put in place today and look at their staffing so that they can proactively protect the product and ensure that their coaches don’t reach a point of no return. At some point, you’re probably going to have to fire someone. Sorry, listeners, it’s going to happen at some point. But let’s talk about this, Josh. What can listeners do right now to put processes in place so that they can save as many people as possible and always improve their product?
Josh Martin (38:08):
So this is something that I’m particularly passionate about, just having coached for so long, and I actually talked about this in my speech at the Summit this year. There is a massive amount of churn in the coaching industry. I don’t know what it is, but I know that it is really, really high. And any gym owner listening to this is probably shaking their head. Yep, we don’t have coaches, or I don’t know of coaches who have really stuck around for more than a couple of years. It’s almost looked at as like, “Ah, I do this for a little while. I do it as a hobby, but then I have to go and get a real job.” And so, the way that I like to think of this is you need to give your coaches and your staff a healthy balance of skill and challenge.
Josh Martin (38:47):
So they should be acquiring new skills, but not just for the acquisition’s sake. You also need to be applying these new skills. And if you could do this—people in the health and fitness industry understand the flow state and people have talked about this ad nauseum—but for me it’s just really finding fulfillment and meaning in the moments when you are coaching. And the way that you do that is by balancing skill and challenge. Because here’s what happens: If the challenge becomes too great. So, you imagine you have a coach with a set of skills that they show up with, and they do a great job. And so, you think, “OK, I’m going to give them the 5 a.m. class, and then I’m going to give them the weightlifting specialty course and then the kids program. And so, you’re piling the challenge on more and more and more.
Josh Martin (39:32):
The reality is: If their skills don’t grow with that, they’re going to become overwhelmed, and they’re going to get anxious, and they’re going to quit to go find a, quote unquote, real job. But the flip side of that equation is also true, that if you just continue to develop them and give them this skill and give them that skill, but then they don’t actually absorb some more responsibility and challenge, they get bored. And guess what happens when you get bored? You go search the internet for different ways that I can make more money, and they leave. So, you have to make sure that as an owner part of your process is, number one, they need to get development and acquire new skills. But number two, and this is probably the hardest part as the leader, is you need to expand your platform for them to apply the new skills that they are learning. And so, this is like—if you’re only listening to this, I’ll try to give you the visual, but it’s like the pie is growing bigger and bigger and bigger, so that’s an expansion of all the opportunity that you are creating for your coaches. And so, if they can see that and then they can understand how to apply those new skills to new opportunities, then you’re going to have a staff that’s going to stick around for a long time.
Mike Warkentin (40:40):
And listeners, I’ll tell you the way that you can do exactly what Josh said: regular career roadmap sessions with your staff members. Could be quarterly, could be twice a year. Figure out the rhythm that works for you. Talk to your staff members. Find out what do you want to do? What do you need to succeed? How can we do this in your business? How can we create a career that’s fulfilling and allows you to live the way you want to live within this business? Are there new opportunities? You cannot do this if you do not have these meetings. And at those meetings, a pro tip that comes from Chris and our mentor team: Give them, every single person, an area of focus to improve before the next meeting. No matter what. Even if they’re a 10 out of 10 coach, say, “Let’s get a little better at this thing.” The way you do that is with an evaluation form. So, start making the subjective objective. Evaluate them with numbers. Josh, where can people find out more about The Refined Art of Coaching?
Josh Martin (41:37):
So they can head to the website, therefinedartofcoaching.com, or they can find me on socials—either my personal is @jmartcfg or @therefinedartofcoaching.
Mike Warkentin (41:47):
And what exactly do you help people with? What problems do you solve?
Josh Martin (41:50):
So we have a certification that is geared towards getting new coaches up to speed. So, taking the skills that they have or don’t have and just actually teaching them what it looks like to coach. There’s a lot of great resources out there in terms of theory, what happens in the laboratory, all these things. But this is the practice of what does it actually look like on the coaching floor.
Mike Warkentin (42:14):
If you have a problem like that that Josh can solve, check out The Refined Art of Coaching. Josh, thanks so much for being here and helping us.
Josh Martin (42:20):
Absolutely, Mike. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Mike Warkentin (42:22):
That was Josh Martin. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” Thanks for watching and listening. Please hit subscribe on your way out wherever you are watching or listening. And now here’s Chris Cooper with a final message.
Chris Cooper (42:30):
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.
