Why Your Team Con. Ed. Isn’t Working with Mike Bouranis

[00:00:00] Hello, my friend on today’s episode, I’m speaking with Mike Bouranis. He’s back on the podcast. He’s the founder of Stoked Athletics. He’s now since being on the podcast last joined the business unicorns team as a coach. And today we are talking about why your continuing education will With your team is not working and how to fix it.

We know all of you really want to have teams who are continuously learning and leveling up, but your continuing education plan just doesn’t seem to be working. So we give you all of our best tips and practices for how to make it work and make that continue education sticky. So if you want to level up your team, Con Ed, this is a great episode for you, keep on listening.

Welcome to the business for unicorns podcast, where we help gym owners unleash the full potential of their business. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the [00:01:00] 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.

Let’s begin.

Hello, fitness, business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the business unicorns podcast. Before we jump into today’s episode, I want you to know that we have a free tool available to you on our website and down below in the show notes. And it’s called the ultimate gym owner report card.

Often as gym owners, you just don’t know what to focus your energy and effort on next. So we made you a little report card. That you can do in under 10 minutes. That helps you assess what are the areas of the business where you feel like you’re really crushing it. And what are the areas of the business where you have not developed the systems yet to consistently and effectively produce results.

So if you would get a little stuck from time to time and you’re not sure where to, how to get started, click down below in the show notes, download our ultimate Gemini report card and start using it right away. It’s free and it’s yours. You’re welcome back on the [00:02:00] podcast today is a business unicorns coach and founder of stoke that little stoked athletics It’s Mike Brannis.

Welcome back my friend. How you doing? Thanks for having me back on Is this your first podcast since joining the business unicorns team has to be I think I think it has to be because you really Just came on board really in the last month and we haven’t been on the podcast in a hot minute So welcome to your first episode Being a business unicorns coach, we’re recording this just like the week after our most recent unicorn society retreat in Boston.

And that’s what we’re talking about today. I want to dive in because you and fellow coach Mickey did a presentation on continuing education. For teams, it went really well. We got great feedback about it. So I wanted to bring you on the podcast and share some of what you and Mickey both taught the room and also what you heard from the room about what’s working and not working.

Thanks for being here. My friend, let’s get started with what are some big takeaways that you would make you share with the room about what makes continuing education [00:03:00] for our teams effective. Yeah, for sure. Number one, getting right into it is do you have a plan for continuing education because it seems so silly and so often overlooked that we think as trainers who are really into this stuff that other trainers might just be doing it on their own or it will come up organically, but like anything in the business, if we want to have consistent results, we need systems in place to make sure that it’s being delivered.

Other than that too, it’s really breaking those things down into what is actually being taught and how are you figuring out what needs to be taught? Who’s the person teaching it because at times it might land on you as the business owner, but at times we can outsource it. How is it being taught? And then most importantly, and this was something that we realized a lot of people miss out on.

How is this being tested? Is this something that you are then following up on and making sure it actually sticks? Yeah. I love that so much. Let’s just start at the very beginning. You’re so right. We talk to gym owners all the time who [00:04:00] continue continuing education is just some kind of wing in it.

They’re just like, when they get the feeling that the team needs to know something, they’ll teach it. They have inservices all the time where people are just constantly talking about coaching, but there’s no real strategy. There’s no real plan to like how you’re gonna develop the team. So I think having a plan for it, which is what do you want people to learn?

Who’s going to teach it and how are they going to teach it? I think is really important. So can you just say a little bit more about how do you do this in your gym? Yeah. So the way we look at it is starting with just the front of the line, the coaches, and this is something I want gym owners to understand too, is you have to match what your bandwidth is, both with yourself and your team.

Yeah. So for us, we have. Our staff meeting, bi weekly, it’s nothing crazy. It’s virtual, unfortunately, because we do have a lot of part timers. But just at the end of our staff meetings, we make sure that we have 30 minutes there for continuing education. Um, and then we’re just looking at the curriculum and seeing what needs to be taught.

Uh, from an evergreen level, what are the things that we always need to be [00:05:00] circulating. And then also, what are the things that might be coming in on the one to one staff meeting with each coach that they might be lacking at? And if we start to see a trend, then that goes top of the line to be addressed.

Yeah, I think that in of itself is such a great example of what like a solid process looks like, right? Which with team meetings, we have regular team meetings and part of those team meetings, there’s time carved out for continuing education. And I love what you said there, which is in that bucket of time is really good for evergreen content, right?

Things we want the team to know and be good at all the time. Basics of customer service, basics of communicating with our clients, basics of following our SOPs, basics of queuing and coaching basics of program design, right? There’s some real essentials. Everyone’s got to be good at all the time. And that goes into your team meetings.

Then it’s also useful as like a management team. If you have a team that’s big enough to have managers, or at least the owner to get clear, okay, what are people learning on an individual level? When I have one on ones with people, what are they learning and what’s their personal individual [00:06:00] growth path look like?

And those two things can be different. They don’t have to be the same. And then over time, I love that you said this, that if I see some trends in one on one conversations and I say, okay, actually there’s three different trainers right now, all working on their ability to sell and ask for referrals and get upsells.

Then let’s have the whole teamwork on that. Let’s push that back onto the whole team time because clearly. There, there’s, we need some more work there. If three trainers are all individually needing extra help in that area, it might be something more useful to think about as a whole team. So I think that’s by itself, even just a great example of what a plan looks like.

Can you say a little bit more? I know a lot of gym owners are hesitant to get their team involved in leading. continue education. Can you say more about how you’ve chosen to do that at stoked? Yeah. So again, your bandwidth is only as good as you can with your schedule, as you can with what your knowledge is as a gym owner.

And there’s probably people on your team that have strengths in places that you [00:07:00] don’t. So for instance, our program director, Rob, when it’s summertime and because he’s a phys ed teacher, when he’s available to do it, we go a little bit harder on the programming side of things. And we just put him in that position.

Number one, it’s nice to be able to take a step back and let somebody else do the work, but at the same time too, it gets him more bought into actually doing it. And at the same time, the coaches might be sick of hearing me talk and they might want to hear Rob talk and they might buy into that a little bit more.

So being able to get them to have ownership in the actual education of each other, just makes them work together a little bit more to actually want to learn that those things better, because I feel like sometimes I’m like mom and dad, where I’m just saying the same things over and over again, let’s be real.

Uh, but it’s good to get them involved. Yeah, I think that’s fantastic. Yeah. All too often, they’re just sick of hearing the leader say the same things over and over again. Just having someone else say the exact same thing can be useful. Uh, and you’re right. On our teams, we have people who are already amazing at some stuff.

So letting them get in front of the room and share what they’re [00:08:00] best at, I think is huge. And I think it’s also okay once in a while to bring in outside folks if you can. If you have the bandwidth for it, the money for it. Or just, uh, barter with other gym owner friends to have them come in and you go back into their teams.

Like all of that can be useful just to change up the voices. But I think it goes a long way to showing our team that we’re invested in their growth and we value their unique gifts. So I think getting your team involved is I think really an underrated but an important part of team Con Ed. One thing too that I can add to that is with the continuing education and outsourcing it.

One of our ways that we allow coaches to have a stipend on education is not only do they have to pass whatever it is that they’re going to learn, but then they have to present on it too. So it’s just another way to get them bought into the actual material they’re learning and then show the other, uh, members of the staff, Hey, if you want to go learn something, you absolutely can.

And we’ll cover it. But come back and teach it to us. Love it. I love that. That’s amazing. Cause whether it’s a cert or a conference or a [00:09:00] book or an online class, if they’re going to go absorb it and we’re going to pay for it, you better come back and not only should you should finish it and pass it, but you should also come back here and teach us what you’ve learned and help us figure out what’s our version of that strategy.

It looked like, yeah. Oh, bravo. I love that. All right. So what else did you all cover in the workshop? I know you cover lots of other areas, but what’s another kind of theme from the workshop? Yeah, so going back into we covered what it is we covered just now, who’s the one teaching it, whether yourself outsourcing another member on staff, how’s it being taught as a big one?

Because not everything needs to be taught so much in person every single time. And that’s especially the case when you might be onboarding somebody, you’re going to find yourself saying the same things over and over again, teaching the same things over and over again. So just make a video, do it once, and especially it works when somebody’s onboarding or you just want to refresh on a topic in between the times that you are doing continuing education.

You can just send them the document, have them watch it, maybe do a [00:10:00] little Google quiz at the end, and then just go from there. It’s just an easy way to, again, work. Within your bandwidth to provide the best education possible. Yeah. Brandon, it’s such a good example of it’s so cliche, but it’s a perfect example of working smarter, not harder.

It’s like you did this in service on this and you’ve onboarded people on this before. So why not just record it, record yourself doing that once, record yourself walking through that once. And then people can refer to it until the end of time. I’ll even go, I’ll even do a plus one on that. Yes. And I’ll also say there’s a lot of great stuff out there already that you don’t even have to make.

Right there, just count infinite number of hours of really smart people out there talking about every topic under the sun that some of your continuing education can be stuff that’s out there already on YouTube. That’s free from even people like Mike Boyle strength and conditioning. We had Kevin Carr at our retreat.

Most of their content. It’s somewhere on the internet, right? When it [00:11:00] comes to coaching and queuing, they’ve given it away for free at some point, even, even business unicorns, like almost everything we teach people somewhere on the internet at some place, we’ve given it away for free. And so I think it’s another thing to, to remind our folks of is yes, you can create some evergreen trainings that you can use at any time, but also someone probably already made it and it might be better than what you’re going to make, so just use that, save yourself the energy.

Yeah, that’s amazing. 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 Jim marketing secrets. You can find a link to download it in the show notes, or you can go to jimmarketingsecretsbook.

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com. And now back to the podcast. [00:12:00] All right, cool. Yeah. What else came up in the workshop during your conversation on this topic? Yeah, the big missing piece after you’ve gone through that, whether it’s you’ve taught it yourself or you got a Mike Boyle video sent out, is this sticking? Is this being taught?

That accountability has to be part of the process. Or really there’s no point to any of it. So looking at the different ways that we can be teaching things, it’s as simple as a Google quiz that you make to make sure they listen to the information, checked it off. One of my favorites, auditing sessions to make sure that the SOPs are being done to the tee.

You could be shadowing in positions that might not be for trainers. If there’s just some sort of skill, like sending out an email or whatever, standing over the shoulder, just making sure they’re doing it correctly and having that feedback right there. And then another one of my favorites for our trainers is our secret shoppers.

Just some clients that we love asking them to just fill out a little survey at the end. Are these things getting done? And then you could review it again, whether that’s in the staff meeting or a one on one, bring it back, give some feedback, see [00:13:00] why or why not these things are being done. And then again, moving forward, is this something that you have to press a little harder on with your continuing education?

Yeah, I’m so glad you all included this in your conversation because all too often people are doing canoe education and that education never translates to how people do their jobs. It never makes its way through the brain, into the body, into our behavior, uh, in how we interact with each other and our clients every day.

And if we’re not doing that. Then you’re so right. Then why the fuck are we even doing it in the first place? If what we’re learning is not translating to different kind of doing, it’s something we do doing it better, more efficiently, faster, et cetera. Then like, why are we even learning it in the first place?

And so I think thinking through. When you’re, when you’re building a continuation, continuing education plan, how are we going to teach this? How are we going to make sure it’s sticking and that it, it stays sticking, that the quality control gets maintained over time, that if we learn this new way [00:14:00] of queuing a deadlift and we roll it out and teach it, there’s lots of role play and we make it as sticky as possible to remember, how do we make sure that?

Continues to happen three months later, six months later, and you gave some brilliant ideas there from secret choppers in the form of clients to trainer audits, to making sure that happens in one on one reviews. I think those are the systems we put in place to make sure that continue education. It’s stuck.

It continues to stick and it represents like our new standard for doing things. One question that gets brought up a lot on this topic is trainers who are just resistant. They’re just resistant to ongoing team education for many reasons, some of which might be they think they’re already good enough, or they’re maybe not getting paid enough to do it, or they don’t see why it really matters, or they don’t like The things that you’re teaching.

So just from your own personal experience, or maybe you guys talked about this in the workshop too, what do you recommend for people who are facing resistance to doing continuing [00:15:00] education, one of the, I’d be actually brought this up because I did miss this point and this was one of Mickey’s like first points, which was right.

People in the right seat, it starts with your hiring. If you’re not already hiring people that are invested in their continuing education and open to learning, then the problem might be starting there. And at some point you might have to just enforce that as a policy of being a coach here is continuing education.

And then it goes down the disciplinary action track. And whether or not that person starts doing it or doesn’t and ends up with a termination is up to you, but having the right people in the right spot. At the start really matters moving on from that though. Some people just learn differently. So I think having that relationship with each of your staff members is very important because some people might not be good at, or enjoy reading so much, but might react better to a video.

There’s wiggle room in the actual way it’s being taught. And I think knowing your staff and figuring out what works for them is huge. Yeah. I think that’s so smart, right? People [00:16:00] write seats. If you hired people who have a closed mindset. And they don’t have that growth mindset mindset. They’re not a sponge.

They’re not excited to learn. You might just hire the wrong people. And two is people have different learning, learning styles. They might just learn in different ways. They might need something else. Then the rest of your team needs to be able to absorb that information. It’s able to adapt and flex to that.

I think is really critical. And you’re right. In some cases, it might just be like, this is a part of doing the job. I’ll add, I think you and I probably agree on this. I do think we should probably pay for most continued education ourselves from the job. Yeah, for sure. I think when it requires significant time, I think we should probably pay them something for their time, especially when we’re doing it with us and it’s required.

If something’s optional, then I think you can decide between the two, between you and your staff, whether or not it’s paid. But I think being paid for the time should really be taken off the table, but that should be a must. Uh, and if after all that, If you’ve hired the right people who claim they’re hungry and want to learn, you’re paying for their time, you’ve adjusted to the kind of learning that works [00:17:00] best for them, and they’re still resistant, then it’s time to move on, right?

You, it’s just the wrong person. You might have to use your disciplinary measures to escalate, escalate the conversation. Because the last thing we want is people on the team. Who are not learning at the pace of everyone else on the team. They’re just holding people back. I think there is something to that old cliche of a team is always as strong as its weakest link.

I think it’s maybe a little harsh to think of a person as a weak link. But I think that, I think the principle stands, right? That A players really want to be around other A players. And if you have folks who, um, are just refused to level up their game, it really does hold people back and leaves a sour note.

I used a lot of metaphors. That was like a whole metaphor salad. It was good though. I enjoyed it. I hope everyone’s following with me. I’m a little caffeinated this afternoon. Alright, so I think you’ve covered a lot of ground already. How would you summarize the most important things that we covered in this conversation?

Yeah, number one, create a plan that [00:18:00] matches your bandwidth, whether that’s quarterly, monthly, during staff meetings, whatever you can do. Take some time to think about what are those evergreen things that you really want to work on and make sure your team is amazing at and start your curriculum there.

Have the one on one meetings with your staff to figure out where the other weak spots are that you can be addressing in those one on one meetings or find trends that need to be added to their curriculum. And then just remember that plans change, it’s better to just have a plan and change it rather than try to either shoot from the hip every time or not do it at all.

So create a plan, try to stick to it the best you can and refine it over time. Yeah. Well, pay your staff, pay them to learn, pay them to learn. Yeah. Just take that off the table. I love that. I think it’s a great summary. I’m so glad you were able to do this workshop in Boston and then come on the podcast here and share with our listeners.

Some of these takeaways. I think it’s a really important topic that people want to get right and they just haven’t often given it that much thought. So I think these are really good best practices. I’m also just so glad to have you on the business for unicorns teams. I’ll hopefully be seeing more and more of you on the [00:19:00] podcast.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Michael. Thank you. Yeah. Listeners. Thanks for listening. And remember, if you want to get our free tool, the ultimate Jim owner report card, click the link down on the show notes and go get it. It’s free and it’s for you. And thanks again, Brian. I’ll see you on the next one. Bye.

Bye.