A Real Coaching Conversation with Mike Bouranis

Speaker: [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3, 4. 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.[00:00:30]

Yeah.

Hello my friend. Before we jump into today’s episode, I wanna tell you about a totally free resource available in our show notes. Many gym owners struggle to work on the right things in their business, the things that actually move the needle to grow the business. That’s why we made this report card to identify where your business is strong and where it needs more help.

It’s [00:01:00] simple, it’s effective, and it takes you less than 10 minutes to fill out. And so. For instant access, go ahead and click the link down below in the show notes and get started right now.

Hello, fitness Business Nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business Unicorns podcast. I’m here with the Manuel Know and love Mr. Mike Baras. Welcome back to the podcast, sir.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Excited for this one.

Speaker: Yeah, I’m excited. I think How many episodes have you been on now? You’ve been on I, I stopped counting too many.

I

Speaker 2: can’t tell [00:01:30] you

Speaker: too many. I’m trying be the

Speaker 2: top.

Speaker: The top guest on the BVU Podcast, for those of you who haven’t seen any past Mike Branas episodes, he’s a Biso unicorn’s coach, gym owner in Long Island, New York, and just overall amazing human. Thanks for being here and doing this. And do you wanna, since this is your idea, do you wanna tell people what we’re gonna do on today’s podcast?

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I always. I think with BFU, the best part about it is the coaching itself and like the conversations you could have with coaches and other gym owners, even the ones who aren’t coaches in the [00:02:00] group. And I realized on the podcast there’s never been a taste of what an actual BFU coaching call looks and sounds like.

So

Speaker: yeah,

Speaker 2: I brought up to you and I said we should just do a coaching call. And record it. Yeah. And then let people know what it’s about.

Speaker: Yeah. 100%. I was like, great idea. Let’s do it. And we should probably do more of these, honestly. ’cause there’s so many. Not only today, I’ll be the coach and work through an issue with you, but so many of the folks on the team all have different flavor of coaching.

We all follow similar format and similar principles of course. But generally speaking in coaching conversation is a unique thing [00:02:30] between two individuals. So it always looks and sounds a little different, but today we thought we’d do just a rapid style one. So this will be not indicative of. Our longer conversations that we have with unicorn signing members, but at the very least give you a little 15 minute kind of laser coaching taste of what it’s like to get onto a call with a coach and work on something really specific.

And, and maybe let’s not get, I’m not gonna give any more context. We’re just gonna dive in. I’m gonna pretend like I don’t know Mike terribly well, like what he’s gonna talk about. And I actually don’t know. He told me briefly what we might talk about, but I actually am [00:03:00] going in completely cold. And so I’ll be the coach.

Mike will be the client. And this will just give you a little taste of what it might be like to hop on a 15 minute kind of quick laser coaching call with a unicorn society. Coach. Enough said. Let’s just dive in and I’ll keep track of time so we really keep it to a hot 15 minutes. Alright, role play begins now.

Hey Mike. How’s it going?

Speaker 2: It’s going well. How are you?

Speaker: Good, good. It’s good to see you. Happy Monday. How? How was your weekend?

Speaker 2: It was insane. We had our annual 5K that we put on and had a little [00:03:30] over 400 people there, so it was definitely a crazy weekend for us.

Speaker: Holy crap. Congratulations. I know you’ve been doing that year after year and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

So Bravo. We like to start all of our coaching calls and unicorn society with a quick win, something that’s gone. ’cause often as entrepreneurs, we don’t take time to stop and smell the roses. So I think I might know what yours is, but what’s something that’s gone really well in the business in the last week?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say definitely the execution of this event was by far the most tight we’ve ever had. Biggest [00:04:00] event we’ve had and best use of our business partnerships as well.

Speaker: Wow. Bravo. Good for you. What are you taking away from it? What’s a lesson learned for you?

Speaker 2: Oh, man. Uh, I guess the biggest takeaway is, oh man.

To allow myself to rely on others more than I normally do because this was a great chance to delegate a lot of work and really give solid SOPs to people and let them play out the way that they should.

Speaker: Wow, [00:04:30] that’s amazing. Good for you. I’m glad you took a moment to pause. ’cause oftentimes we have these amazing wins.

We do these incredible things, like 400 person event, and we don’t take the time to learn from our wins as much as we learn from our, our failure. So the fact that you can walk away that lesson of, wow, I can only rely on other people. And delegate more and lean on people more. What a great lesson. We’ll move on, I promise, but one last question about that.

We’re somewhere right now in the business where you could apply that lesson immediately.

Speaker 2: Not to bury the lead, but that’s where a lot of this call is probably gotta go. Oh good. Is the need for me [00:05:00] to be comfortable delegating more?

Speaker: Amazing. Alright, Lynn, this is a great transition you lined up for us.

Typically, on a coaching call, I would ask you about an action step that you took from our last conversation, but since we’re, we haven’t had a last conversation in this instance, we’ll just dive right into what you wanna work on today. So what’s the outcome you wanna get from today’s call?

Speaker 2: I would like to have a little bit more clarity on my own work life and what that looks like and what I should be focusing on, and then where I should be allowing [00:05:30] myself to shed responsibilities and start delegating them off.

Speaker: Okay, so if, what I think I’m understanding is that you wanna get some more clarity on what’s on your plate tonight. Right now, what are your priorities are, and specifically what are some things you could be delegating now to shift your role into kind of the next phase? Am I hearing that right?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Really level up the gym by moving myself up and then getting everybody to move up as well.

Speaker: Okay. And when you think about having that clarity of what that’s gonna [00:06:00] take and what you do next, what does that clarity look like to you? What do you need by the end of this call?

Speaker 2: I would love to know. I think as an owner, it’s really hard to build my own schedule and tell myself what to do and when to do it.

And I find myself just with a task list and just constantly hammering tasks day after day. A solid plan, so almost like a weekly schedule with work blocks. That would work best for me.

Speaker: Okay. So you wanna leave this call with some plan for making a weekly schedule with work blocks to make sure you’re really [00:06:30] clear on not just what your priorities are, but when you’re gonna work on those priorities.

Is that right?

Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. Well, let’s just start with what you just mentioned a second ago, which is it’s sometimes hard for you to not just get clear on the priorities, but really be disciplined about telling yourself what to do when, what makes that hard for you.

Speaker 2: I find that even if I have something on my schedule, at times I’ll allow seemingly more urgent, which I’ll put a lot of weight into the word seemingly, uh, take away from what [00:07:00] I’m supposed to do because I feel like I have to do the thing that just popped up.

Speaker: Got it. So this, you have, let’s just say you have this time blocked for doing X, Y, z, priority. That time comes and then suddenly there’s something else that comes in and gets your attention, and you decide to spend your time on that thing instead. How often does that happen? Every

Speaker 2: day.

Speaker: Every day.

Speaker 2: Every day.

Speaker: Every day. There’s something that’s pulling you away from their priorities. Listen, I think that’s relatable, right? I talk to unicorn society members all the time who have intentions for having a day that [00:07:30] looks like X, and when they finish their day, it often does not look like X, it looks like Y or Z, or.

Or pineapple. Right. Just, it just looks like a completely different day at the end of the day. So I don’t think you’re alone there, my friend. I think it really is a very common challenge to set up your day, to be a day you can win and then go knock down those pins with no distractions and no change of plans.

Right. So we don’t wanna let perfect to be the enemy of good here. It’s okay to change, change. And shift gears a little bit, but just walk me through what are the kinds of things [00:08:00] that, that, that are the distractions. What are the things that are pulling you away from your priorities?

Speaker 2: I think sometimes it may be when I’ve delegated a task or helped line somebody up for a project.

Maybe we didn’t do the best job of figuring out all the nuts and bolts. So there’s last minute things like, oh, I need to actually make a QR code for this thing, or there needs to be a backend workflow attached to this. So it’s spending some time building those out. Other times it may be just answering an influx of leads that happen randomly, [00:08:30] or clients that have an issue and that gets escalated.

To me, those would probably be the most common ones.

Speaker: Great. So people coming to you with questions, things that they need, that seems like you’re maybe the only person in providing an answer for, is that right?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker: Yeah. Okay. So if right now you’re trying to set up your day, if your goal here, this call is to have a schedule where your priorities are really clear and there’s time to do your priorities.

And when they’re scheduled, you wanna sit down and actually work on them without having these distractions take over. And right now these distractions happen or these other priorities pop [00:09:00] up. We can call them fires. That’s what people usually refer to. These other fires pop up you wanna put out. So if right now you’re going and putting out those fires when they pop up, but you don’t wanna do that anymore, what are you gonna do instead?

So when someone comes to you and you’re in that moment where you’re gonna sit down and work on a priority and they come to you with questions, what do you want to have happen instead?

Speaker 2: I would love for a solution or a list of possible solutions to be brought to me [00:09:30] to require myself to do less thinking on it and help them figure out which solution is best.

Speaker: Got it. Got it. And how do you instill that in your team? How do you make that happen?

Speaker 2: I guess the first would be number one, using that method as often as possible so that that becomes just a culture of bringing me solutions, not problems.

Speaker: Sure,

Speaker 2: and I guess educating the staff on the possible problems they’re gonna encounter and different solutions [00:10:00] to those problems.

Speaker: Got it. Okay. So what’s emerging to me here, like what I’m seeing in this conversation is there’s really two paths here. There’s a path to you getting and staying clear on what your priorities are and making time to work on them. But there’s also this like parallel path of you empowering and training others to interact with you differently, right?

To be more self-sufficient, to maybe come with you, come to you with more solutions than questions. Maybe rely on each other more. Yeah. Am am, am I hearing that right? [00:10:30]

Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say that’s, and it’s probably the latter, is probably the bigger fish to fry right now.

Speaker: Yeah, say more about that.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that a lot of these things come from my unwillingness to let go of.

The way I like things done, or at least, yeah, the way that in that moment I think it should be done. Even if the way that they did it was perfectly fine, or my [00:11:00] lack of time to spend really building out more SOPs or situations or role playing or team training in a way that gets them to not need me in the tests.

Speaker: Yeah, I’ll say this, Mike, and you know this as well from your work in unicorn society, but you, it, you don’t get to become a business owner and entrepreneur if you don’t have the confidence that your way is the right way. That’s

Speaker 2: fair.

Speaker: You, you wouldn’t be in the seat that you’re in, or frankly, I wouldn’t be the seat if I am, if I didn’t [00:11:30] think that I had some good ideas.

And the way I do my work is. Pretty good and other people should learn from it, right? So that they think it’s a pretty like universal founder, entrepreneur experience that, that we think our way is a pretty good way. We want most people to follow up most of the time. And you’re right, it’s hard to let go of that.

It’s so hard to let go and let other people make mistakes. Other people do things other ways. And I wanna say, I just wanna take a moment to say, you are not alone, my friend. That’s like. Kind of quintessential experience of being a business owner and entrepreneur. And so [00:12:00] when you think about letting go, when you think about letting people try things their own way, make mistakes, fall flat, et cetera, what worries you about that?

Speaker 2: The metrics that I want to be hit are not being hit. And for somebody who likes to set very aggressive goals and who. Does have a good track record of those goals being hit. It scares me to think we would’ve quarters where we’re not hitting the numbers we wanna hit. Yeah,

Speaker: yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.

And I, I know enough about your [00:12:30] business to know you already have a lot of mechanisms in place to keep track of metrics, get in front of metrics, look at your data, adjust course based on your data. So walk me through what are the things that you already know you have in place that might prevent that from happening?

Speaker 2: Weekly one-to-one meetings with anybody who is in charge of any KPIs, dashboards in in place where we’re reviewing those things, task lists, where we look over what got done, what [00:13:00] didn’t get done. That would be the main things that come off the top of my head right now.

Speaker: Yeah, I know you have a version of a weekly mission control meeting, leadership kind of meeting.

You have a lot of like checks and balances in place that makes the likelihood of someone like going rogue and fucking up your metrics long term or seriously seem pretty unlikely from this lens. Am I missing something?

Speaker 2: No. It’s probably the reality of that of more in my head than it is physically. In reality.

Speaker: Let’s find out. Let’s find out. [00:13:30] I know we’re only supposed to do a quick, hot 15 minutes here, so maybe let’s move our attention a little bit to what do you do next? So we have these two things we’ve identified in this conversation so far. One is your desire to let go, make a schedule that makes time for your priorities.

And two, is this empowering your team, letting go of some shit, delegating more to them. And so let’s start with the first one first. What is, what’s the actual next step to clarifying what your ideal weekly schedule needs to be?

Speaker 2: I think locking in the tasks that I cannot delegate at the moment and [00:14:00] that need to be on my plate.

Speaker: Okay. So yeah, walk me through if you, if you have time this next week to do that, what are the steps that you would follow?

Speaker 2: I would probably just go through my calendar and see what are the things that I’m doing week after week, day after day. I would probably just double check that against any task list I have for myself and making sure that I’m not choosing things that others are doing as well.

Yeah, I would just start there.

Speaker: Great. So go through your calendar and your task list. Yeah. Make a list of all the things that are priorities that you really you have to tackle [00:14:30] next. And maybe start to map those onto a calendar. Yeah. How long is that gonna take

Speaker 2: confidently? I would say an hour is a good amount of time to go through everything and just triple check it all.

Speaker: Okay. So an hour to go through everything, triple check it all, and then how much time to actually start to build that into a calendar.

Speaker 2: Maybe another 30 minutes with some time to check in on it every couple of days to make sure it’s actually making sense.

Speaker: Alright, [00:15:00] so you got like maybe 90 minutes to kick this thing off in the next week. And so do you have your calendar in front of you?

Speaker 2: I do,

Speaker: yeah. Looking at the, your calendar for the next, let’s just call it week or 10 days.

Where do you have 90 minutes to get this thing started?

Speaker 2: I can do that on. Wednesday between three and four 30.

Speaker: Okay, cool. And how would you like me to hold you accountable for that one?

Speaker 2: I guess next week when I’m being checked [00:15:30] in on, just ask if I did it.

Speaker: Okay, great. I’ll check in and you did anything in particular you think is gonna get in your way here?

Speaker 2: I will. We just had that event and a lot of people are now looking at times to book consult, so if I get consult inquiries, I will move that sucker. As fast as possible, lemme tell you. Okay.

Speaker: Yeah, of course. Yeah. Sales, that’s more thing I will do. Sales are gonna come first. That makes sense. And so you might wanna put a backup time right on your calendar?

Speaker 2: Oh, actually,

Speaker: yeah.

Speaker 2: I already have an out of office block on Thursday, 12 to one 30 that I could put [00:16:00] on that we’ll never have consult.

Speaker: Okay, perfect. That’s even better. Alright, intro the time. Let’s get to the other. The second thing we talked about, which is while you’re getting your house in order here and making your ideal weekly schedule, there’s also this adjustment that needs to happen here, this resetting of expectations with your team about how and when they come to you with questions and challenges.

So what’s the next step to figuring out what that boundary looks like?

Speaker 2: Probably in my team meeting, my mission control with them, putting [00:16:30] that on the issues and opportunities list, and having a discussion about how does this work for each and every one of us.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And maybe just making it more of an open discussion to get their thoughts on. Okay, when are the times that you feel like you don’t have what you need?

So I can start building out a list of, okay, I need to work on X, Y, and Z. So they feel more confident in creating solutions for the issues.

Speaker: Okay. I love that. So you have, you have this weekly mission control meeting, and on there is issues and opportunities list. You’re gonna put this on the issues list to say, Hey, I need some boundaries for when I’m working on my priorities.[00:17:00]

So I wanna get, ask all of you, what are some times where you feel like you don’t have clear instructions or you have to come back to me? What can we do to get in front of that? What else would you wanna talk about with the team during that conversation?

Speaker 2: I guess just underlining the thought of, okay, does this make sense? And that doesn’t make sense. I know it makes sense, but like I wanna get their feel on. Number one is, [00:17:30] do they feel like this is an issue? Is this something that they’re seeing alive or is this living in my head

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker 2: As well.

Speaker: That’s fair.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker: Am I missing

Speaker 2: something there, you think?

Speaker: No, I think this makes a lot of sense to me. Right. It sounds like you just wanna start a conversation with them about it, that actually it’s less targeted and more, let’s have a conversation about this. I feel like X, what do you see? I would like to move in this direction.

What do you think? It sounds like a more of just an open, round table conversation about how you interact with them in this way. Is that right?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay. This is more just like [00:18:00] discovery, right? I think when we think about managing like a change project, right? The first step is just go gather all the information, and this is you just gathering the information about like, how does your team see this issue and what are some solutions there thinking of is how you’re seeing it, the way they’re seeing it, and that I think that’s a great first step.

That makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, and I guess your action step from that will depend on how the conversation goes.

Speaker 2: Correct.

Speaker: Yeah. So it would be even possible for us to decide at this point, but it sounds like I can at least hold you accountable to putting that on the issues list, [00:18:30] having the conversation, and then maybe reporting back to me with, what’d you get out of it?

What came from that conversation with your team that you wanna act on. Does that seem fair?

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker: Cool. And how would you like me to hold you accountable to that one

Speaker 2: if I don’t. Reach out to and let you know how it went then.

Speaker: Great, great. I’ll make a note for next. When is your mission control meeting?

It’s what days?

Speaker 2: Wednesdays with the team? Yeah.

Speaker: Okay, great. So I’ll make a note to reach out to you on Thursday to just make sure that all went well. And same thing for that one. Is there anything in [00:19:00] particular that might get in your way of making that, of having that conversation?

Speaker 2: No, that that happened unless, God forbid, I can’t make it to that meeting for whatever reason, which never happens.

Speaker: Yeah. But that meeting happens. Yeah. Okay. That’s great. Yeah. Alright, cool. So repeat back to me the next steps you’re taking here.

Speaker 2: It’s on my calendar ready now, but do a calendar check in to get a better understanding of the tasks that I need to really block out for and make a weekly schedule with. And then to have a conversation with my team to [00:19:30] understand what are the tasks that they feel like.

They do need to come to me for quite often because they don’t have the full picture of what they need to do or how to do it.

Speaker: Great. Awesome. Great summary. And then one last question here is a scale. Scale of one to 10 is a scaling question. Scale of one to 10. How likely are these next steps to move you in the direction you wanted to go today?

Speaker 2: I think a solid 10. There’s really nothing. There’s nothing that they’re missing to at least get that next step forward.

Speaker: Good. Okay, great. And, and from our work [00:20:00] together, it is all, everything we do here is one step at a time in business. It’s one foot in front of the other. While you came in to this conversation, really thinking big picture about organizing your, your work and shifting to the next chapter, the fact that you’ve outlined a really doable, actionable, uh, next steps here, I think is super smart.

And that’s how all meaningful change happens, right? Just like one foot in front of the other. So you’re doing it, my friend. How do you feel about these next steps?

Speaker 2: Pretty good. That gave me a little bit of a less [00:20:30] anxiety with this problem that I’m having, so that

Speaker: Good. Good. Yeah. Just unpacking and putting all your Legos on the table sometimes just helps you take a deep breath.

Speaker 2: Absolutely.

Speaker: Yeah. Anything else I can be doing to support you in these next steps?

Speaker 2: No, I think just a follow up and the accountability will be helpful.

Speaker: Okay, great. If you’re running into any snags, hit me up and let me know. If not, I’ll reach out to you on Thursday.

Speaker 2: Sounds good. Thank you so much.

Speaker: Thanks, Mike.

All right. Role play over. That was like my, my, my movie clapper, so I, that was pretty indicative. [00:21:00] That was a regular, felt like a regular call to me. Did it feel real to you?

Speaker 2: Yeah. I’m so interested to hear the feedback on this because I really think like people don’t understand how. How minimal the steps should be when we’re actually like dealing with these issues and how it could break down into what you just did.

Speaker: Yeah, that was quick. 15 ish minutes conversation, but I really did go from you coming with a real issue that’s real for you to some good action steps. And in a longer conversation we would unpack more of the details and talk a little bit more about what’s actually happening in your team. We might [00:21:30] get more specific with the act, there’s a lot of stuff we could do, but in a quick 15 minutes, this is really a triage kind of moment I think.

I think we got. As far as I would hope to in a conversation like this.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. That was perfect.

Speaker: Yeah. Thanks for being honest and coming with a fun thing to role play with. Hopefully our listeners get a sense that coaching conversation is really just like having a partner in your pocket, right? Having someone who is like a, a third party who doesn’t have a dog in the race and is just here to be like helpful support for you, helpful collaborator, [00:22:00] and so hopefully that’s what it felt like.

Yeah. Dear listeners, if this was valuable and you want us to you more live coaching, let us know. Put a link down in the comments. Shoot me an email, mike lip unicorns.com, or go over to our Instagram and DM us and let us know if you want more content like this or if you have any feedback for this coaching conversation.

I’m all ears. I’m doing this for a long time, but tell me if I could have done something better or differently. I’m curious, and again, thanks for this great idea, Brandis, and for offering yourself up as a Guinea pig. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2: Absolutely anytime.

Speaker: Awesome. [00:22:30] Or if have a kick ass week everyone.

I’ll see you on the next one. Bye.