Hire Your Staff for These Two Traits with Mark Fisher

[00:00:00] Hello, my friend on today’s episode, I’m talking with Mark Fisher, and we’re talking about the fact that hiring the right staff for your gym can be hard. And we’re going to give you the two traits that we think are most important to look for in every single client facing person that you hire for your gym.

So if you want to level up your hiring process and make sure you find the right people to work at your gym, this is a great episode for you. Keep on listening.

Welcome to the Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym and studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me and the Business for Unicorns team each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym.

Get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.[00:01:00] 

Hello, fitness, business nerds. What’s up. Welcome to another episode of the business unicorns podcast. Before we jump into today’s episode, I have a quick question for you. Have you ever wanted to peek behind the scenes of Cressy sports performance or Mark Fisher fitness? What if you could spend a day and a half learning with Pete Dupuy and Mark Fisher for only 179 bucks?

Well. You can, after selling out last year’s offering, we’re bringing back our collaboration with perform better, which is the industry’s leading source of functional training, equipment, training, info, and seminars. And it’s called the gym owner masterclass. It’s exclusively for gym owners looking to create more income or impact and more freedom.

We’re going to teach you the most important lessons we’ve learned in our combined 30 plus years of running our gyms, and you’ll learn. What’s working right now for the top 1 percent of gym owners in the world. It’ll be a full day on Friday, May 16th and a half day on Saturday, May 17th. It’s in Warwick, Rhode [00:02:00] Island, and you’re invited my friends.

So click the link in the show notes to learn more. And on the podcast today is Mr. Fisher. So I’d have to ask you, how stoked are you to do this again with perform better? It was so much fun last year. Yeah, very, very excited. It’s a, listen, if you’ve never been, first of all, it’s fun to go up to Mecca.

Second of all, it’s actually only 149 bucks. Great. Even cheaper. Update our blurb. Even cheaper. And Warwick has never been a very affordable place. So even if you flew in, it’s going to cost you dollars between the ticket and the hotel. Uh, lunch is provided, I think on the first day, maybe the second one as well.

Uh, I mean, it’s, there’s almost no financial investment for this comparatively. So yeah, it’s going to be very exciting weekend. We had a great time doing it. We’re excited to perform. I was bringing us back and yeah. Can’t wait to share it with you. If you missed the first one. Yeah. Everyone who went to it last time just had, was raving about how valuable it was for a day and a half.

So if you, if you can go, my friends go, you’ll never find a better price point for such great value. Well, let’s talk about today’s topic, which is really about hiring. It’s about how to, [00:03:00] what, what qualities do we really want to look for when we’re hiring our team, specifically trainers. And so, you know, I think this is a tricky one because there’s so many of our listeners and, you know, Jim Otis in general might be doing this for the first.

Right. The hiring and looking to grow their team for the first time. And it’s a hard to know how to find the best people, like what to look for, when there’s so many things you could hire for what things really matter. And so you want to talk a little bit about your experience, hiring Fisher and how you’ve learned what matters to you when you’re hiring.

Yeah, I mean, we’ve had a lot of people at this point. Yeah, it’s interesting. You know, I think, like, I maybe had a little bit of a journey to getting back where I started for most trainer roles. So when we started Mark Fisher Fitness, we hired people somewhat arbitrarily, so I was like, hey, I know this guy.

Hey, do you want to job guy, which wound up being like later, one of my best friends and an amazing team member trainer, Kyle Langworthy, but that was basically the amount of thought we put into it because I just had the sense he seemed to know what he was doing and he was [00:04:00] friendly and not bad to look at so great.

And then one of our other hires, very famously, you know, we hired after cure come to city, Brian, Patrick Murphy, one of Arthur co founders of MFF who. You know, it was an athletic guy, but we hired mainly because we’re just like, I think people are really going to want to be around this person. And it’s interesting.

I don’t know that we ever really moved away from hire for personality. I think as the years progressed, we put more of a premium on training for skill. And I think it is probably true if you want somebody coming in freshly baked where they can go on the training floor, probably have some training experience.

It’s going to be very hard to have them go right into training, even if they’re enthusiasts. If they’ve never done some kind of training before, but when I look at our history. You know, and there’s, there’s definitely exceptions, but I think on balance, we’ve tend to have had more success where there was somebody that we just felt like, wow, we really want to be around you more.

And I bet people really want to be around you. And if you like training enough, we can fill in the blanks and we’ll teach you those other things. And, and I think we did. And I think, you know, to MFFs [00:05:00] credit, there has always been a culture with a real commitment to getting good at the training thing. I think that’s often underweighted in the conversation on.

Unicorns and other, you know, couture ma of lewd behavior, but I think that the, the warmth piece is hugely important, and I think, like, It’s, it’s not for me any more complicated than like, do you want to keep hanging around with this person? Right? It’s not the only thing we’ll talk about confidence in a minute, but I think over the years that has become so clear to me is that that’s the thing that when a client decides they’re going to stick around or not, that’s the one non negotiable that I don’t want to be around the person.

It doesn’t matter if you’re competent, right? If you have to choose one, unfortunately, probably choose warmth and let them be incompetent. Yeah. Do both. 100%. We want both and we’ll, you know, we’d rather pick one or the other. I think that’s right. I think when we think about hiring, we’ve always talked about the fact that you’re looking at two buckets of things, right?

They’re kind of character and their competence. And when it comes to character, the kind of character that matters most for me is. [00:06:00] Is the stickiness of their personality, right? Like, do I want to spend more time with you? Do I look forward to seeing you again? When I’m inviting you back for that one on one interview, am I stoked to get to know you more and spend more time with you to make me feel seen and heard when I’m in your presence?

Do you make me laugh? Like, do I look forward to coming back and spending more time with you? Because that is one of the things our clients are asking themselves every. Day when they decide whether or not they’re going to the gym, right. It was what’s pulling me there. Yes. I might have some intrinsic goals and motivations that are pulling me there, but also are the people there making it easier for me to decide to show up?

Right. Are they pulling, am I looking, I can’t, I can’t wait to go to the gym today to go see Mark Fisher, right? Like that’s what we want from our, from our clients. And when you don’t have that, it’s real obvious. It gets real. It’s real obvious when there’s. Folks on the team or it’s not pulling the same attendance numbers as other folks on the team.

And in some cases that’s due to the time of day, but in other cases it’s, you can move them around and there’s attendance numbers follow the people [00:07:00] and it becomes really obvious that their personality is just not as sticky as some others on the team. And I think that really matters. It’s not the only thing, like you said, but if that’s not there, they’re just not the right fit for the job.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Particularly because I think so often really what you’re asking is how wide a distribution of humanity Yeah, we’ll be attracted to this kind of person right because it’s also true. You might have somebody that is overall Great for a certain kind of person, but there’s deeply deeply polarizing and listen I realize I have actually made a career being deeply polarizing but net net When we’re talking about this particular arena of people dealing with any sort of group training class format that you are, they’re going to be exposed to a wide variety of personality styles of ages of temperaments as dispositions.

And if the person has no versatility to be somebody that is attractive to a wide variety of people, you’re going to run into issues. And again, probably it’s also true on the flip [00:08:00] side, nobody’s going to bat a thousand, right? There’s nobody that’s going to probably. It’s not universally beloved, but ideally everybody at least tolerates the person and a critical mass want to hang around this person, want to spend more time with them.

I think that makes me think that, you know, one of the, one of the things that makes it tricky for gyms like Mark Fisher Fitness that serve a general population, right? Which is we have a. Pretty, you know, we have a clear avatar, clear center of the bullseye for who we’re marketing to and speaking to and designing our services for.

And we also attract people way outside the bullseye, all ages, shapes, colors, sizes, you name it. And, and to find trainers who can resonate with as broad of that population as possible is tricky. I think this challenge is, is this looking for this character of who. Character trait of warmth is still really important for gyms that have more specific avatars, right?

There’s certainly a unicorn side of members who serve just people over 50 or really just serve, you know, sports performance athletes who are like teenage baseball [00:09:00] player dudes, right? Like, and then in that case, you know, what you’re looking for is someone who that specific avatar feels warmth towards feels a connection towards.

And that would be a little easier when. You have to narrow in on just a very specific avatar, but for all you gen pop gyms out there, what you’re looking for, I think there was a good way of saying it. Fisher is, you know, a personality trait that appeals to the widest possible range of humans that are coming to your gym.

Not everyone’s going to be for everyone, right? But we want to try and find someone who’s going to be for as many people as possible. So yeah, I think that’s the character part. That’s the warmth part. But then we also know the other side of the equation here is competence, right? They have to have some skills and experience that make them likely to be good at the job, if not already good at some parts of the job.

So, you know, talk me through what your experience is kind of searching for the right kind of competence. Yeah. And this is interesting because this conversation couples tightly with a previous conversation we had not that long ago about, you know, wet to noodle gym owner that just doesn’t have the strength of conviction that makes them dynamic [00:10:00] that people feel drawn to them in some way.

And in practice, listen, for some people, you’re going to go all the way in the end zone. just because the trainer you’ve hired is just so likable and dynamic that they don’t really care. Right. This is the cliche, like this personality profile, like the, the influencer, the amiable big picture person, like, well, I don’t care.

We’re having fun. I don’t know. I’m not hurting. Right. Like I’m out of work for some people across the standard distribution. Hey there, business unicorns, podcast listeners. I’m just making absolutely sure you have already gotten your free instantly downloadable copy of my new book. The little book of gym marketing secrets.

You can find a link to download it in the show notes or you can go to gym marketing secrets book. com. I worked super hard to make sure this 30 minute read and as a comprehensive overview of all the things you need to do to grow your gym, get more leads, more clients, and importantly, change more lives.

Again, find the link in the show notes where you can download your free copy at gym marking secrets book. com. And now back to the podcast, [00:11:00] but a lot of people are also looking to understand, are you, are you competent, right? And it’s, it’s worth knowing for better, for worse that doesn’t necessarily serve as a perfect proxy for actual competence because really what they’re reading often is confidence, right?

And they don’t really by definition, most of our clients are not subject matter experts. They’re not going to be able to really hold forth with a strong opinion about how progressive your understanding of spinal biomechanics is or isn’t. They just have a sense of like, Oh, this person is using the right amount of big words.

It’s enough that they, I’m sort of picking up. They must know what they’re talking about and they’re, they speak well and they speak authoritatively. They’re not talking so much jargon that I feel out off put, or I feel like they’re trying to put on airs. And that’s a lot of, I think, how people ultimately make the decision, right?

Does this person have confidence? And that is how they’re going to assess, like, is this person competent or not? Now, on a long enough timeline, of course, things like not hurting people, getting results matter, but [00:12:00] we all know, listen, that’s delayed feedback, but it’s not going to happen the first session, right?

So competence to my mind is there. The one part of it is doing your integrity. Having integrity as a fitness professional, you want to actually be good at a good job because that’s its own reward and its own obligation. I think if you’re imposing loads on people’s bodies and then there’s confidence as a function of competence, right?

Because one of the issues we see too is people sometimes come across as less competent they are because they’d have such bad self talk, they just can’t. They just don’t believe in themselves, right? And because of that, they sort of like Or just kind of unpolished communication skills that makes them feel like they’re always fumbling the ball when it’s like, no, they know what they’re talking about.

They just can’t get it across to you. Yes. They speak poorly, right? And you know, all of these things, I think to some extent can be learned, right? I think like public speaking is probably a very important skill for everybody that’s a human. I don’t think the robots are taking that soon. I think I’ll I’ll probably take everything eventually, but for now, public speaking is going to be valuable and that will [00:13:00] go, I think, very far to improve your sense of competence, the actual technical skill of speaking at the right volume, at the right pace, with the right amount of pauses with a minus verbal filler.

And then if you were to, to study warmth, you would not, you would not do poorly to read how to win friends and influence people, which is the, you know, the cliche book. But if there is a manual that helps you really think, okay, how do I. Turn up my personal charisma and a lot of, I think both of these, if our defense lies, both of these, I think a lot of your success here is being other focused.

I think you run into issues when you’re thinking about yourself, you run into issues when you’re thinking about, am I being likable or like, do I even know what I’m talking about? If you’re so focused on that person with like love and care and excitement to see them and give them all of your energy and focus and attention, that’s going to cover most of the freight, right?

And I think having the personal sense of security to be willing [00:14:00] to do that. is so much of the game because that’s what a lot of people are looking for. Again, they’re looking for fitness outcomes, but so much of the customer service experience is the famous Mary Kay quote, making me feel important, right?

Everyone’s wearing invisible necklace that says, make me feel important. And I think that’s how you operationalize. You have to get out of your own head and focus on the person in front of you. Yeah, 100%. I think for most of our listeners, like that, that is the shortcut, right? That I want to look for some warmth in their character and I will look for some Confidence in their competence, right?

Like that they generally have some some confidence in talking about the their job Right. And they come across as being someone who can speak with some, some conviction and authority on, on the things they do that are helpful to their clients. I will say this, I’m going to make it even more tactical. I will say for all of you out there who do the hiring, I think it does serve you to dig a little deeper on the competence side and make a list of competencies that are most critical to the job you’re hiring for.

Right. So when it comes to a trainer, You care about [00:15:00] some competencies. You probably want most people you’re hiring to at least have a certification are going to be able to demonstrate what they’ve learned in that certification to you in terms of some clear coaching cues, right? Making, having some good eyes on people and being, you know, what would you call that, like perceptive enough to see, you know, to be able to understand what’s happening in someone’s body through observation, right?

There’s some competencies that you want to look forward to baseline ones. He would have been bringing someone in for an internship, right? Other competencies might be like that. They know how to organize themselves and, and, you know, achieve goals. They might, you know, I mean, managing a to do list or a calendar, right?

So I think, but going through and making a list of competencies that you can check for in a hiring process is really useful. But at the end of the day, they all sum up to what matters most is the client feels like this person’s good at their job. They all, they all sum up to that. But I think for it to be tactical, I think if there’s an action step from this, I think it’s for all of you to go make a list of the core competencies that you really care about so you can decide who, who from your hiring [00:16:00] pool really has the most batteries included.

You know? Yeah. Oh, what else? And so what we’ve covered here is really like these, these two things that really matter in hiring warmth and competence. Let’s just say, let me do this, ask this question just because I think sometimes we’ve hired people already. There’s many people listening who are realizing after the fact that there’s some folks who don’t have these things.

Then what? Yeah. And so let’s start with, you know, you realize you hired someone who’s just not connecting with clients. Their personality is not sticky. They’re not, people aren’t feeling their warmth. What do you do about that? God, it’s, it’s so hard. I mean, ultimately you address this the way you would any, I think, performance issue.

You try to really quantify what are the behaviors that are happening or not happening. So you’re coaching on behaviors, right? Because one thing that can be a little bit challenging, this kind of conversation is. Warmth can feel fuzzy. It can be different things to different people. So you’re really looking to quantify what [00:17:00] that is, right?

And over the years, there have been moments that have been In retrospect, Hilarious, but the time somewhat stupefying where there were things that had to be articulated. I was like, Oh, okay, this young person doesn’t understand that after the set is done, you can’t sit in total silence until the next and look at the floor.

You actually have to say something right. And in practice, there’s a few sentences you have in your back pocket. It’s always like. So what neighborhood do you live in? Or, so what do you do for work? Or, how did you find out a gym? Or, depending on the time of year, going away for the summer, right? Like, and I think as you become an adult, you be, at least for me, somebody that I don’t know that was actually strictly natural, you begin to sort of socialize and be like, oh, okay, I’m noticing this kind of going around me.

And, and How to Win Friends I think does a good job of, Making some a tactical, but I think your, your takeaway here, if you’re looking to correct for this is to make this quantifiable and I’ll tell you that the stickiest thing again, the real, real combos, the stickiest challenge you have is when you have someone that is a really [00:18:00] overall pretty great person and they’re even a pretty good employee and they’re just not that great at the job and they’re not so bad that it’s obvious to fire them and they’re trying hard and they just can’t put the pieces together in a way that it.

Makes people want to be around them. And again, for a lot of your frontline staff, a lot of your trainers and coaches, you are optimizing for certain. yellow lab personality and vibe. And absent that you can really have a tough situation where this person is doing all the right things. They’re professional.

They mean, well, you like them and just nobody really wants to hang out with them. So they’re, they’re so fine, you know, and that’s, that’s hard because you quantify it, but at some level it’s like. Yeah. Do I fire this person that’s so reliable? I mean, this is one of the hardest, hardest things to, to manage, right, is, is manage someone who’s, whose personality and rapport with people just is not where it needs to be.

It’s tough because it has a lot to do with life experience and maturity [00:19:00] and socialization, right? There’s so many things that come into play. I do think something as simple as like reading the book, how to win friends and influence people I think is a good place to start because that book breaks down some real tactics.

I read recently. I’m not sure if. You read this one because it was one that it was reading for school related research, but it’s called wired to connect, wired to connect the author. Authors are, I think, Banks and Hirschman. And so this talks about like the, it’s a little kind of a neuroscience perspective on what makes us connect.

Like the link between like a brain science and building healthy, strong relationships. But what it’s good is it gives a framework that helps you kind of. Diagnose or self diagnose or self assess yourself at how you’re doing in some kind of key social behaviors. And I think that’s helpful to kind of like unpack for yourself.

Okay. Well, why aren’t I building strong, healthy relationships with my clients or my coworkers or whatever? And, and, you know, and the brain science has a lot to, as a, as a lot, it can help us with, right. Cause it’s all about kind of coding patterns in our brains. Right. And so all of you nerd. [00:20:00] You know, brain nerds out there, I think will, that’ll appeal to you, but I will say this is not like a straight up neuroscience book.

It’s very practical. It’s meant for the general public, but I think it’s another good one for anyone who’s struggling to figure out what do I do about the fact that I can’t seem to connect with people. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I think the other part, the other piece of this is put me a little easier when you get someone who lacks the competence, right.

Of the things. That’s that tends to be more kind of, I’ll call it a traditional learning, which is, you know, you’re, you feel the knowledge gap and then you feel the behavior gap, right? You teach them the things they don’t know about program design or coaching and queuing or how to do sales or whatever it is.

And then you help them get better at that thing over time by practicing, practicing, practicing. So that part’s a little bit easier. Uh, anything you would add to that? Yeah, I agree. I think it is over time. People start to slowly feel more confident. I think one of my observations has been interesting over the years is how much of that, how much of that uphill climb is dependent on that person’s self talk and their [00:21:00] conception of their own competence.

Yes. And. perversely, of course, the people that are like not as hard on themselves can come across very confident, even though they they’re not necessarily good. And then you’ll have sometimes other individuals that are very hard on themselves and are performing at a very high level, but just reek of lack of belief because they’re hard on themselves in ways that are you know, maybe not completely rational, but also like has some potential upsides.

So, but in general, yeah, people get reps that they get time. Like most people, both of these things are not quick fixes, right? For better for worse. I do think they can get better over time. If you’re really intentional about the work that you’re doing, but yeah, in theory, the competence thing can get better, but we’re talking specifically about competence.

as a function of confidence. Yeah, that is an interesting thing to note too, where sometimes you’re boxing with the shadow puppets of someone’s upbringing and the messages they receive from their family or society, about how competent someone like them, someone like them, could be at this, at this job, and that’s [00:22:00] an interesting thing to unpack.

Yeah. 100%. All right. Well, let’s wrap it up. How, how would you kind of summarize the things we talked about and takeaways for our listener on this one Fisher? Well, I think first of all, awareness is maybe the first piece here. Just thinking through perhaps your staff. And if you were to rank them on a scale of one to 10, both for warmth and competence, how might you do that?

I think certainly you could take a look at your current hiring process to understand what can you integrate here to vet for these abilities. Uh, because even warmth, you could probably try to quantify a little more of the process we talked about. Uh, creating some specific competencies tactically when you’re looking at your hiring process, you’re clear on specifically what do people need to be good at and how are you assessing that they are or not in the hiring process.

And then finally, when you circle back over to your team, let’s say you have found some individuals that either have some deficiency and of course we all have room to improve always both of these. What are particular things that you could do over the next day, one, two, three months to work with the individuals on your team to make sure that they’re aware that there’s these two [00:23:00] important factors and try to turn up the light switch on both of them over time.

Yeah. Great summary. Love it. Awesome friends. Well, if you want more badass insight and knowledge like this, come to our gym owner masterclass, which again is Friday, May 16th and Saturday, May 17th and Warwick. Rhode Island link down below in the show notes, we’ll get you all the right information and get you to register again.

Only 149 cheapest day and a half worth of knowledge and value. I’m never going to spend the time with cheap again. Yeah. You can spend the time with Mark Fisher. Yeah. So go click the link and join them. Join them. Thanks Fisher. I’ll see you on the next one. Bye.