How to Think Like a CEO with Mark Fisher

[00:00:00] Hello, my friend. On today’s episode, I’m talking with Mr. Mark Fisher, and we are talking about the transition that many of you on this listening to this podcast have either gone through or will [00:00:10] go through, which is the transition from being a trainer to being a gym owner. And we’re talking about like the mindset shift that has to happen as you slowly build your gym and [00:00:20] become a real CEO.

And we talk about the, the way you spend your time and how that shifts from being a self-employed trainer to being a gym owner. And we also talk about that because we also have a [00:00:30] workshop coming up called Trainer to CEO Workshop, where we’re gonna talk about how you make that transition from being a. A wonderfully self-employed trainer to being the real [00:00:40] CEO and thinking like a CEO of a gym with a team and scale.

And so if that’s you, if you’re going through that transition or you have already been through that transition, and you want to continue [00:00:50] pushing yourself and challenging yourself to really think like a CEO of a business, this is a great episode for you. So keep on listening. 1, [00:01:00] 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 [00:01:10] 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 [00:01:20] your gym. Get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.[00:01:30]

Hello, fitness business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business Unicorns podcast, and I’m back here with [00:01:40] Mr. Fisher. How are you today, sir? I am doing pretty good today. Chilling. Yeah, spring has been sprung and it’s been really lovely weather. Have you eaten outside at all? [00:01:50] Yeah, I just, I don’t wanna do anything but drink martinis.

That’s all. It’s, but not the best thing to do. But yeah, I’ve definitely been spending a lot of time outside with CC in the evening and just enjoying [00:02:00] living here on the river in little slice of paradise. It’s Long Island City. Yeah, it’s been so fun. I’ve been going for much longer walks with my dog and started, I had this whole last weekend, a little bit of this weekend, dedicated to [00:02:10] gardening, who am I?

And so it’s just good to be outside in some fresh air. So today’s podcast is actually all about this. Brand new workshop coming up and we’re dedicating a whole podcast to it because we think [00:02:20] there’s, even just talking about this topic is valuable for folks and certainly getting people know who haven’t heard yet about the workshop will be valuable.

So lemme just introduce this new workshop we’re offering and then we’re [00:02:30] gonna dive into the actual topic, what’s in the workshop, and maybe just share a few tips that are gonna be included. So we’re doing this new workshop, it’s called Trainer to CEO Workshop. It’s gonna be hosted by Mr. [00:02:40] Mark Fisher, himself online on Zoom, and it’s happening on Wednesday, May 7th at 11 o’clock.

Eastern and the just the, I’ll lay the groundwork for the big picture here. The big picture here [00:02:50] is that many of you listening to this are a trainer, maybe not yet a gym owner, and some of you will be a gym owner one day. Some of you listening are already a gym owner, [00:03:00] and this workshop is really about.

Changing and evolving your mindset from thinking like a trainer to thinking like a business owner and CEO. And while they’re not mutually exclusive, they’re, [00:03:10] it does require a little bit of an evolution to go from someone who is an individual contributor, building relationships with every single client, wearing many hats in your business and doing it all to being [00:03:20] someone who starts to run an actual.

Business with other team members where you’re not the only one building relationships where you’re a key decision maker for a lot of people, where a lot of your [00:03:30] success is about the success of the team that you’re managing. So there is a shift that happens with everyone, not just gym owners, from going with someone who’s used to being an individual solo contributor to someone who’s.[00:03:40]

Whose outcomes and output is really driven by the work of others. And so I love this topic. And so Fishers, tell me a little bit about what are you planning for this workshop? Who’s it for? [00:03:50] Yep. Yeah, I think it’s, it’s specific for gym owners. Mm-hmm. Want to do, spend more of their time. And be more effective at the [00:04:00] roles that you need as the owner, right?

Yep. Which are things that will allow you to grow the business, do a great job with your team, and make sure that things are humming [00:04:10] along in the right direction. So I think it’s specifically for gym owners that know that they sometimes struggle to adopt, not only adopt the identity, but adopt the behaviors that [00:04:20] are the business owner needs, which are different than a trainer or fitness instructor.

And I think you. Said, a very important thing I wanna highlight is it’s not that you stop thinking like [00:04:30] a trainer and a coach, right? Yeah. Just you need to be able to not wear that hat all the time. ’cause you also, I would say this, you don’t want the tail to wag the dog completely where it’s only about the money and f the product and [00:04:40] like whatever.

And like that can happen too, right? So you still wanna think like a trainer and a coach, but just the way you spend your time, the types of activities you do, how you [00:04:50] think has to change as your identity evolves and. Whether you are somebody that is not owning a gym now and would like to own one at some point, or you’re currently a gym owner and you find [00:05:00] yourself stuck in the rat race, you’re burnt out, you’re overwhelmed, you’re running around ragged, you’re trying to do all the things.

You are business in a plateau and you know you need to do [00:05:10] something different from marketing, but you’re not sure what. And even if you did, you’re not sure you have the time. Those are all indications that we’re thinking probably a little too much like a coach and a trainer. And we need to move more towards these [00:05:20] leverage activities.

And obviously in the full workshop, I’ll go into greater detail about how you might spend your time in those various three roles. Yeah, 100%. Maybe. I feel compelled to share a little bit of just kind of [00:05:30] personal anecdote. I think that’s relevant here. And I think you probably have a few as well, but I’ll just say this, when we first started MFF and I was like the quote.

Business guy behind the scenes that was not the trainer. It [00:05:40] was, it was a little while before, before we actually were started building out an actual business team to take some of that business stuff. Mm-hmm. Off my plate and, oh, after those first few hires that we made for people to quote, be on the [00:05:50] business team or working the front desk, I mean, I recognized myself at that time and looking back, I’m sure it was way worse than this.

I’m probably making, I’m probably smoothing out the edges, but I definitely had [00:06:00] the, let me just do it. Syndrome. Right. Like I had, because I was so used to learning how to do it all myself, like I created our MINDBODY account. I knew how all that worked. I knew how to change [00:06:10] things on our website. I knew how to all the, I knew how to do all the things.

’cause I, at one point, I did all the things and the minute I tried, I started to hire a team to take some of that stuff off my plate. I [00:06:20] couldn’t stop thinking like the person I saw myself as, the person who still did it all best. Yeah. And that’s so gotten my way of investing in people and developing a team [00:06:30] and getting things off my plate.

And I see that all the time with Unicorn Society members and I’m, I’ve been guilty of it, which is getting stuck in that idea that, especially for trainers, that you’ve been the best trainer ’cause you’ve been the [00:06:40] only trainer. Yep. You’ve been the one that everyone likes the most. Everyone likes your style.

Yeah. So getting out of your own way and recognizing that you can hire people who, people maybe even like better. That are better than [00:06:50] you at some things that you can teach and invest in and will learn your approach, but also bring their own special magic. And I totally didn’t give enough to other people at first because I just [00:07:00] was hoarding all that, all those tasks, in some cases, a hoarding authority and power instead of.

Instead of giving it away. And so I recognize that in myself and I see it very quickly [00:07:10] in other gym, others that we talk to on a regular basis. So I just, I share that as a little tidbit that I know you’re gonna address as part of this workshop. Yeah. But also for our listeners, if that sounds like you, this [00:07:20] workshop is for you.

Yeah. That’s exactly one of the outcomes that you’ll get from this is learning how to think more, spend your time on other things besides what you’ve already, [00:07:30] always spent your time on. Yes. Yeah. Particularly ’cause a lot of gym owners have a lot of low hanging. Fruit and, and that’s one of my favorite wraps, bought a hat.

’cause if you’re in a conference or seminar, it’s [00:07:40] very hard with a mixed room because different people in different places, it’s hard to have something that’s valuable for everybody. But something that’s always valuable for everybody is think of something you know, you should not be doing that you should have someone else do on your [00:07:50] behalf.

And everyone will have some things. Yes, and certainly to your point, particularly when you start to move to the higher level things, it’s even more nuanced and even more sticky. Because you really have to, as they say in traction, let go of the [00:08:00] vine and let the person do the thing. And then of course that also assumes you how to properly train and oversee the person because you can also do it too quickly.

Like a, in the beginning of Mark Fisher [00:08:10] Fitness, when I would give Brian Patrick Murphy like a yellow legal pad, be like, here’s the workout, go do it. Which would, subsequent employees didn’t work as well when they would like burst into tears. I was like trying to train them. I just didn’t know [00:08:20] how to train them.

So yeah, there’s, the role of the gym owners is very different. Than the role of the trainer. And one other model that I’ll talk about in the workshop [00:08:30] that I’ve started to think of, and Ben Picker’s really helped formulate this in my mind. You have independent trainer transitions to independent trainer plus.

Transforms the gym owner and that [00:08:40] ladder leap is quantum, right? Because some of you listening, and this is, none of this is meant to be like negative. I’m not like judging you for this, but a lot of people listening might say, I’m a gym owner, but [00:08:50] oftentimes you’re an independent trainer that’s doing your own cash collecting.

Yeah. So you’ve left the big box gym, but functionally your job is exactly identical, but you now no longer have. [00:09:00] You have your own space, sometimes even your own garage got left. Yeah. But there’s no one else involved. You are still responsible. You are responsible for finding your own clients now and you’re responsible for managing your own [00:09:10] payment collection and you’re keeping all the money, but you also have to manage your own taxes.

And that’s really the main, and you’re doing in your own space. But in many ways it’s pretty similar to what you’re doing in the big box gym. Right? [00:09:20] Then you get to independent trainer Plus, and this is, uh, oftentimes someone will really identify and say, oh, I’m a gym owner, right? ’cause I have staff.

Oftentimes, if you actually look what’s going [00:09:30] on, it’s closer to the independent trainer than a gym owner because this is a situation where you have perhaps one to three people that are part-time, more often, not. They’re independent contractors. [00:09:40] You probably the handful, not always, but often, there’s a handful of people that are paying you rent to also use your 900 square foot.

They’re not an employee and they’re not really on your team. [00:09:50] They’re literally just like. Somebody that rents your space and you’re still making most of your money from your hours training, and you don’t really have a lot of freedom to step [00:10:00] away and to the extent that your team is running some crude systems on your behalf, it’s not impossible to keep your arms routed just because you’re there all the time.

You’re there [00:10:10] 60 hours a week, you’re on the floor 30, 40 hours per week, and they’re doing minimal stuff. So you don’t really need a lot of systems, you don’t have a lot of freedom, and you can make good money in the model, right? It’s [00:10:20] not wrong. But when you leap go from independent trainer plus to gym owner, it’s a quantum leap.

So now you have 1, 2, 3, or more people that are [00:10:30] payroll often with one or more of them being full-time that you, your hours on the floor now are often gonna be under 20, often 15 or 10 or even lower, right? A lot of [00:10:40] people like to still train ’cause they love training and there’s a case you made to stay in the trenches.

But most of your income now, unlike independent trainer plus. Is not [00:10:50] primarily driven by you training sessions. It’s starting to be driven more and more by other people fulfilling on the services. And because of this, you have a lot more responsibility to really drive [00:11:00] marketing revenue generation because now you have mouths to feed.

You have a team that you have to make enough money to keep employed so you can give them enough hours. And then now you really need systems and you really need leadership because if you’re gonna [00:11:10] start to now claim some freedom. It means more and more you can’t get by on bru effort and just trying to micromanage and oversee everything casually because ideally you’re not there [00:11:20] all the time.

Ideally, the gym is able to run without you. I’ll give one other little marker of this. I’ve observed over the years, like, oh, another difference is if you have an independent trainer plus model. If I look [00:11:30] at your schedule. It doesn’t make any sense. And that’s okay. It’s you’re figuring it out, but your schedule’s, oh, I do Tuesdays at 7:00 AM and then Thursdays I have a 6:30 AM mm-hmm.

Because [00:11:40] I, Mrs. Rossini, she likes to train at six 30. Yeah. So it looks like a hodgepodge in a way that as a trainer, that’s how you do it. You just fill in your schedule. Whereas when you have a gym, [00:11:50] particularly if it’s a any sort of group model, it’s like there should be some symmetry. That makes sense.

That doesn’t look crazy if I’m just looking at the schedule. You don’t just add random times. ’cause that’s when [00:12:00] the person could need it though. You might pick up some personal training clients. I’m not saying that would be wrong, but ideally I. But you are building a schedule first, and then clients are slotting into it.

If [00:12:10] you’re in the independent trainer plus model, part of the tell is you’re still just adding sessions random willy-nilly because not gonna, they won’t train here. If I don’t train at 2:00 PM I have to add that 2:00 [00:12:20] PM Tuesday, which by the way, no one else wants. So anyway, I’ll pul there. But that is, I think, an important model for people to consider.

And it’s not wrong to say you want to live in the world of independent trainer [00:12:30] plus, or even independent trainer. You can make a ton of money doing it. But you’re not really probably opening up those higher levels of income impact and freedom, which is where most of the people that we work [00:12:40] with either are at or are aspiring to get to.

Yeah, I think it’s a, I think it’s a great model. I’m glad you took the time to, to spell it out for folks Fisher, because I think the key distinction along that timeline, [00:12:50] though, there are many, but the key one that really matters is on one end of the spectrum, the beginning end of the spectrum, you’re really trading your time for money, and over time you’re trading other people’s [00:13:00] time for money.

And yet that’s what UN unlocks the freedom is that you’re making money when other people work on your behalf. Yeah, and that’s the scale that I think a lot of people dream of when they think about being self-employed. [00:13:10] I think of that kind of quote, making money in my sleep, which sounds more poetic and romantic.

Yeah. Than it really is. But that’s, it’s also you’re still having some [00:13:20] roles. Yeah. Our business are usually not big enough. Exactly. I’m the owner operator and I just just bought cash. That’s like the north star that everyone kind of dreams of, but I think it’s a good model. So you mentioned a lot here that one of the things that’s [00:13:30] changing as you.

As you journey across that spectrum is just how you spend your time. Yeah. And I know a lot about this workshop is gonna focus on is the things we think gym owners who are thinking like a CEO [00:13:40] should spend their time on. Yeah. Without giving it all away, what are a handful of the things you’re gonna cover in this workshop that are focused on what should the CEO gym owner be spending their time on?

[00:13:50] Yeah, so I offer a model where I lay out a five hour. Calendar, mm-hmm. That you can use to focus on the most important things to drive the ball of your business forward. [00:14:00] Now you have to work more than five hours, and if you want bigger, faster results, and if you’re more sophisticated, you might spend a lot more than five hours on these items.

But the core [00:14:10] things that you need to be doing is overseeing strategy, which is usually some combination of looking at numbers and understanding where you are. Having a clear plan for where you want to get to, both [00:14:20] financially and qualitatively, and then some sort of planning system, right? Some sort of strategizing where you decide, okay, what are the goals, the short term, the medium term [00:14:30] projects we’re gonna roll out so that we move from where we are now for where we want to be in additionally.

Part of your job is to make it rain. You gotta make the business grow, and again, [00:14:40] how much time you’re spending on this will vary at different points of the business. I think you’ll never delegate responsibility for the marketing outcomes. It’s your job as the leader to make sure enough leads are coming in [00:14:50] and enough sales are being made.

But regardless, you are responsible for making sure if you want to burst out a plateau and get more active clients and more revenue. [00:15:00] That is your responsibility, whether you’re doing it through other people or really doing it all yourself. And I’ll give you the most common mistake I see here is people are just not spending enough time doing it on a weekly basis.

[00:15:10] Certainly you could make better decisions, certainly you could make better decisions, the activities, and you could do those activities better. But the core thing, more often than not. [00:15:20] We’re just not spending enough time. If I look on a calendar, the amount of time you’re spending generating leads, nurturing leads, following up with leads, having sales conversations.

If it’s like an hour [00:15:30] per week, I wouldn’t expect that really to move the ball forward. I’ll give you one other, one other common mistake here. In addition, not spending enough time, it’s actually doing too many things. There’s not an unlimited [00:15:40] number of things you can do to drive your business, and the most classic thinking mistake is, ah, okay, I did this thing.

Wow, okay. It really worked. Alright. What else can we do now [00:15:50] that’s different, right? And instead you should just do more of the thing that was working. Just spend more time on that. And then the last piece of course is leadership, which is how are you making sure that everybody’s up to standard on, [00:16:00] I always think of it as the hospitality.

Half of your product and service, the customer service piece, and then the training. Half of what we offer, which is program design, exercise [00:16:10] coaching. I’d maybe even put behavior change coaching in that half. And then I think that’s undergirded by how are we developing the team? Personally and professionally.

So they’re acquiring skills. They have the opportunity [00:16:20] to make more money to advance in their career, whether it be in opportunities you can create for them, or supporting and loving them when they go on to other things, because you’ve got a wonderful system to bring in new [00:16:30] people and upskill them over time in a way that is virtuous and beneficial to both of you.

So to high level, I think those are the things we need to spend our time on. And the final thought that I will [00:16:40] share is I think where a lot of trainers go wrong, and I spent a lot of time in this, and I’ll give you some very tactical things in this workshop to think through this and suss it out is a lot of people spend a [00:16:50] lot of time doing things that are on the level of a trainer or a coach.

They spend a lot of time, and this is the cliche, they’re working in the business but not on the business. And then they crowd out all the [00:17:00] time that they otherwise would spend on the business ’cause they’re just so busy. In the business, and there’s, I think, some things that you’d want to delegate sooner rather than later.

There’s some things that [00:17:10] you might not wanna delegate at all, but a lot of trainers just get stuck. I should say gym owners, trainers aspiring to function like a gym owner get stuck because they’re just [00:17:20] doing so many of the things in the business administratively for the facility, training on the floor, that they never have time to actually grow the business.

And then you just get stuck in this nasty [00:17:30] cycle where you feel overwhelmed. You’re doing all the things, you’re working every second. You don’t, you feel like you’re not making enough money to afford help. And I think that’s wrong. By the way. I’ll be giving you some good strategies there. [00:17:40] And then you can’t ever get out and.

Most gym owners, when you’re growing from independent trainer plus the gym owner, there is often an ugly inflection point of three to ideally no [00:17:50] more than six months, maybe 12 months, where you’re gonna grind, right? Depending on what your financial situation is and how much money you need to pay your bills.

If you don’t want to go into debt, [00:18:00] there might be a gnarly period where you go all, all in. One thing I’ve observed with a lot of gym owners I know both professionally and even informally, is. A lot [00:18:10] of gyms get, I think of this like ugly middle ground where for two to five to 10 years they keep not making quite enough money and they’re working way more than [00:18:20] they want to, but they can’t dig in long enough to really get the flywheel going, get enough momentum that they can grow the business point where they can start to hire competent help and then get that [00:18:30] new step function.

Where their relationship with the business changes and they can function. Someone definitely like a gym owner. So yeah, there’s a lot to be said about it and there’s a lot of specific ways you might do that and ways you could [00:18:40] do that poorly. But yeah, I will cover more detail when you come to the workshop.

Yeah, I love that. The workshop really is gonna be so focused on how to spend your time, because as we talked about and we see all [00:18:50] the time and. Experienced ourselves just as the owner, you’re often the bottleneck to your business’s growth. How you spend your time is the thing that’s either helping propel the business forward or holding it [00:19:00] back, and that’s, that’s not an individual feed to anyone personally.

It’s just what happens when you wear that many hats and you have that many options for how you spend your time. It’s part of the work is. Narrowing those options [00:19:10] and staying focused on the most important things every day. And that’s hard. It’s hard to do, especially if you don’t have an outside coach or mentor, helping you see yourself in that way.

It’s really tough [00:19:20] to do. So I love that the workshop is focused on spending your time on the right things. I think it’s so valuable. Yes. All friends. Lemme just remind you, this workshop is happening. If you’re listening to this podcast. When it comes out [00:19:30] on May 2nd, it’s just five days away. It’s happening on Wednesday, May 7th, 11 o’clock Eastern and Fisher, will people get the recording?

They will. Yep. It’s if you sign, [00:19:40] but only for registrants and you’ll only have seven day access. Because as everybody who’s ever heard me say anything has heard me say when people can do things whenever they do them. Never. So I’d love for you to [00:19:50] come ’cause it’ll be a lot more fun for me if I have some fun faces with me on the Zoom.

But if you can’t attend, absolutely no problem. If you sign up for the recording, you will get seven days access. Yeah. And how much does this workshop [00:20:00] cost? We haven’t talked about that. Yeah, it’s nine. Nine bucks. Amazing impulse by amazing. So Wednesday, May 7th, 11 o’clock Easter, 99 bucks. You get access to the recording for seven days afterwards.

The link [00:20:10] to sign up for is down on the show notes. Go sign up my friends and spend the time with Mr. Fisher going over all the things we talked about today in great detail and you won’t regret it. Thanks for talking through this [00:20:20] Fisher. I think you’re gonna have a blast. I’m so excited to see how it turns out.

I think people are absolutely gonna love it. So thanks for talking through it. I’ll see you on the next one. See you then.[00:20:30] [00:20:40]

Up. Get up, get [00:20:50] up.