Unexpected Lessons in Leadership From Moving Pete’s Gym to a New Home

Speaker: [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3, [00:00:05] 4. Welcome to The Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym and [00:00:10] studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. [00:00:15] Join me and the business unicorns team each week for actionable advice, expert [00:00:20] insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym.

Get ready to [00:00:25] unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.[00:00:30] [00:00:35]

Speaker 2: Hi friends. You’ve got Pete and I today and this [00:00:40] is really cool ’cause while we’re recording this, it is the middle of the World Series [00:00:45] and Pete has athletes both on the Jays and the Dodgers. [00:00:50] Plus the strength coach for the Dodgers is a product of the CSP internship [00:00:55] system, and as someone myself who does not follow baseball to the same degree that Pete [00:01:00] and many of you do, I just think it’s really cool how our [00:01:05] gyms can touch so many lives in such a ripple effect that we honestly don’t always see [00:01:10] on day one.

So it’s cool context for doing a podcast together today, Pete.

Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. [00:01:15] And the thing about all of the people that you kind of loosely mentioned here is [00:01:20] that there isn’t a single one of them that I had tabbed as definitely [00:01:25] gonna be even a professional athlete someday, let alone in the big [00:01:30] leagues or an intern who came out of our system and was gonna make that climb.

[00:01:35] It. It’s pretty mind blowing. And so I, I’m reminded repeatedly that. The [00:01:40] people with the big scouting report, for lack of a better term, are rarely the [00:01:45] ones who end up handing out. It’s the people I never would’ve guessed. So we gotta treat everybody [00:01:50] with the mindset that they all have that same long-term potential.

’cause [00:01:55] I could, I’m so wrong if I try and tell you who the best intern will be as far as career [00:02:00] success goes, I’ve swung in my so many times on that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s, yeah, that’s a very [00:02:05] good point. That applies to all of us. Yeah. The other cool piece for today is you are [00:02:10] currently what? Day two. Day three of being in your new facility.

And [00:02:15] today I wanted to talk about some of the things that have gone and maybe some of the [00:02:20] things that you had some unexpected curve balls when it came to moving facilities. ’cause [00:02:25] it’s a lot of our listeners, I think, and sometimes members, it’s easy to be like, oh, this person’s [00:02:30] been around forever.

They’re well known. Everything’s going easy and everything’s going right. And [00:02:35] knowing you the way I do now, I mean it was love, but I was like, that’s not always the case. So I wanna hear what did you [00:02:40] learn? What’s gone on? How did you prepare appropriately so people in the same boat can get the same results.[00:02:45]

Speaker 3: We’re still in the weeds for sure. In fact, we are, let me [00:02:50] see, looking at the clock, we’re 90 minutes into our first day of training sessions here [00:02:55] in, uh, the newest CSP. I’m not gonna call it CSP 2.0 ’cause it is actually what, [00:03:00] this is the fifth iteration. Of a flagship location that I’ve set up [00:03:05] since 2007, and I think I learned a lot in the [00:03:10] process of doing this multiple times before granted, the last time I did it was 2012, but there was a [00:03:15] point yesterday when we were almost 72 hours in where a couple of my [00:03:20] colleagues looked at me as we were taking a break, honestly, getting our asses kicked, [00:03:25] and they said, is this worse than ever before?

And I was like. This is considerably [00:03:30] easier than I remember it. We’ve got more sets of hands. The things that suck [00:03:35] about this, I knew they were gonna suck. Like I knew that moving those horse stall mats was gonna suck [00:03:40] and cutting them meant that I was gonna be all bandaged up. I have multiple bandaids on my hands from [00:03:45] cutting myself with the utility blades, but.

I think it’s just, I’ve compounded [00:03:50] experiences doing this. I’m desensitized to the pain of it, but I’ll tell you, we, I just got a [00:03:55] small win that you never would, no one else would think of. But we have all this turf down in the old [00:04:00] space, we had 45 yards of sprinting, turf. We had two pitching cages side to [00:04:05] side, and we had ’em glued down because listen, new gym [00:04:10] owners, if you buy yourself some new turf and you’re like, this shit’s really heavy.

It was impossible layout. [00:04:15] I don’t need to glue it down. It’s not going anywhere. I’m telling you, glue it down [00:04:20] because when we didn’t glue it down, we would be buy a new roll of turf, I would say every [00:04:25] 24 to 36 months. And we were like, this is just the cost of doing business. And [00:04:30] finally, I bit the bullet and I’d say doubled the spend and had [00:04:35] like a 2017 iteration of turf put down.

And that’s the stuff that needed to be [00:04:40] ripped up today because it’s just the lifespan is wildly extended when you do it the [00:04:45] right way. Shocker. But the win, the win in this, I [00:04:50] have a riding floor stripper scheduled to be delivered. It was scheduled to [00:04:55] be delivered a half hour ago, and I have a four hour chunk of [00:05:00] my day time block today on Halloween.

I have two kids, it’s Halloween. This isn’t a good day for me to [00:05:05] be. Riding this device and stripping up turf so that we don’t lose our [00:05:10] deposit on the other space. But my lease is up as of today. I get a call [00:05:15] from my guy, cannon, one of my employees who went over to do some last minute stuff this morning, and he’s like, [00:05:20] all the turfs gone.

I was like, what do you mean the turf is gone? And he said, the new tenants are so [00:05:25] excited to get in here. They pulled it all this morning, it’s been disposed of. It’s in their dumpster, [00:05:30] it’s gone. And holy crap. I called my rental [00:05:35] company and I was like, Hey, I understand if I gotta eat the rental fee, but I can’t take delivery of this.

I don’t [00:05:40] know if it’s left. And she’s, we’re loading it now. You’ve rented enough stuff from us. I’m gonna take it off the truck. You’re good. Don’t [00:05:45] worry about it. So I got four hours of my day back. I got my rental feedback, and if [00:05:50] the former landlord comes at me and says, we’re holding your deposit because we paid to remove the [00:05:55] turf, I’ll say, I own that space until 11:59 PM today.

[00:06:00] And you went in without my permission and stripped that shit off the floor. And so I got [00:06:05] a big win today. If we wanna talk about random wins, but got one. [00:06:10]

Speaker 2: I think there’s something, there’s a lesson in here where. [00:06:15] A lesson in here about even when you own a large, objectively successful [00:06:20] gym, there’s still stuff for, your plan today was to ride a floor stripper for four hours to not lose the [00:06:25] deposit on your gym.

Speaker 3: Yeah,

Speaker 2: and it’s a

Speaker 3: well, and that definitely holds true. I’ll [00:06:30] say in a bunch of different realms, and I’ve seen it for about a month straight as I’ve been in this new space. [00:06:35] We are leaving a facility, I’ve complained about this on the podcast before. We’re leaving a [00:06:40] facility that was owned by a massive holding company.

Millions of square feet of [00:06:45] commercial property in their portfolio we’re just a line item on their ledger. They just [00:06:50] could give a shit about us. We are coming to a facility where I know the whole family. [00:06:55] That owns the property. They own a lot of property in town. They’re like a mini, mini micro [00:07:00] version of that huge one.

They’ve got, I don’t know, 10 or 15 buildings in our town, but every [00:07:05] time they drive by and they see my car out front, they pop in and they’re like, you need anything? You wanna use the forklift? Do you [00:07:10] need to use our scissor lift? Can we send somebody in to help and or their mom and pop? [00:07:15] And as we were getting down to the home stretch here in the last week, I’d come in and my landlord, Jim, would [00:07:20] always be here.

And I came in the other day and I look, and Jim’s got a tool belt on. I [00:07:25] shit you not. He is framing out our new bathroom and I was like, what’s going [00:07:30] on? And he is one, I’m licensed to do this, and two, I work with idiots. My contractors aren’t gonna show up [00:07:35] until tomorrow and I need the tile work to be done tomorrow.

So I’m doing this shit myself. And I was like, I [00:07:40] texted Eric and John immediately. I was like, guys, we found the right landlords [00:07:45] because that’s, that is the landlord equivalent to me going in there with [00:07:50] that floor scraper tonight. Owners aren’t above. Yeah. Doing what needs to get done by a deadline. [00:07:55] You just do it.

’cause this is small business. We’re not a corporation. Someone might have incorporated that [00:08:00] way in the gym industry, but it’s not us. And yeah, it, I don’t know. It’s [00:08:05] just there are no jobs that are beneath us. We’re all gonna do shitty work during shitty [00:08:10] hours to get this thing across the finish line, including the, maybe Eric [00:08:15] Cressey was there.

John always tells a story about 2014. He was in our intern class in our first Florida [00:08:20] facility. He laughed that we have a video of Eric throwing a porcelain toilet [00:08:25] off a loading dock into a dumpster the day before we [00:08:30] got up and running. Eric had himself a nice big audience at that point, and was [00:08:35] supposedly some sort of fitness influencer.

He was there getting his hands dirty. Yep. And so [00:08:40] we’ve all gotta do it. And I hope there isn’t some assumption that because I’m one of the [00:08:45] owners, I skip those things.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I completely agree. [00:08:50] I have to this, to the point of cuts on your hands with utility knives. When I, [00:08:55] we ripped out turf in our space a few years ago and put down more horse tall mats, it was the right thing for us.

And while I was [00:09:00] cutting one of the mats, it’s me and cat’s dad are doing this on, I don’t know, Friday [00:09:05] evening or something. ’cause we gotta get it in for the sessions the next day. And I’m cutting the util those [00:09:10] horse tall match, which is a huge bitch, as many other people will know. And the utility knife snapped and all the [00:09:15] force I was using, I ended up stabbing myself in the thought.

Oh. And I [00:09:20] know it wasn’t that bad, but I ended up, I had to get the job done because I’m like, shit, we’re on the [00:09:25] timeline here and it’s already evening. We got a lot to go. So I just duct taped it and paper toweled it, which I’m not [00:09:30] recommending. And then I’m like, God can Canada has free healthcare, but if it’s not like [00:09:35] life threatening, you’re in the waiting room for a very long time.

So I text my buddy who’s a [00:09:40] doctor and I’m like, can you stitch me up? Are you at home? So there is a photo [00:09:45] of me on the internet somewhere of me sitting in my friend Dig B’s kitchen [00:09:50] in my underwear. ’cause I stabbed myself in the thigh and he had to get to it with my leg cut open because [00:09:55] his terms of giving me.

Very quick response. Healthcare was, [00:10:00] he thought it was funny and had to get a photo, and he stitched me up in his bathroom and then I went back to finish the job. Now [00:10:05] this isn’t like a we should all be tough kind of thing, it’s just that we gotta do the shit. And I think there’s a lesson here [00:10:10] twofold that you’re sharing.

One is, regardless of optics, the owner is not above it, at least in most [00:10:15] well running organizations. And two, something that sounds like it just worked out really well [00:10:20] is having a really good relationship with the landlord of people who give a shit. This is gonna be a [00:10:25] home for a long time.

Speaker 3: Oh, sometimes

Speaker 2: you gotta rent from the big HoldCo and you don’t have [00:10:30] a choice.

But if you can find a landlord who actually gives a shit, like my landlord gave me his [00:10:35] truck so I could move my equipment into his gym, like a big F five 50 with a big box on it. [00:10:40] Or you’re in a place where something goes wrong, you can call the dude and he’ll have a beer with you to talk about it. [00:10:45]

Speaker 3: It is everything.

Maybe the best piece of advice I can give [00:10:50] get, go with the landlord if you have the choice between. The big option [00:10:55] or the small mom and pop one always go with the ladder. And we have the same thing. I have a [00:11:00] pickup truck parked outside our loading dock right now that belongs to Roger, who’s one of the owners.

[00:11:05] And he said, just you let me know when you want me to come get it. And I was like, no, Roger, we will bring it back to you. [00:11:10] You don’t need to figure out guys and come get your truck. But he’s all in with [00:11:15] us. And you know what I do? Roger and I have a pretty much every day of the week [00:11:20] argument for the last two months.

Since the day I signed that lease, I won’t charge him. [00:11:25] And let’s say Roger’s very comfortable. They, he doesn’t feel not having [00:11:30] that pickup truck. He’s got six more vehicles waiting, but [00:11:35] it drives him absolutely bonkers that I will not swipe his credit card for [00:11:40] his training. And to me, this is just part of that game.

[00:11:45] Roger, I’m not charging you, I’m not charging Jim. I’m not charging Kathy. [00:11:50] In fact, his son-in-law’s been training, and Roger doesn’t know it, but I’m not charging him either. And [00:11:55] I just think there’s so much goodwill to be gained there [00:12:00] that a couple thousand dollars of revenue isn’t gonna be a deal breaker [00:12:05] for me.

If it means that when I’m in a panic and we’re in a pinch or our [00:12:10] plow guy didn’t show up or something, I can call them and I know that they’re gonna scramble and be like, we got you. Let’s go to our [00:12:15] network. We got you. And so it’s imperative to me. That. [00:12:20] I’ll tell you a story that really connects this.

Back when I started doing the fitness lecture [00:12:25] circuit, I found I was routinely out there with Alan Cosgrove [00:12:30] and we were traveling. We were in England speaking at this really cool event. [00:12:35] And he, he ever travel abroad to give a lecture and I was like, no, I’ve never crossed [00:12:40] borders of our country to do this.

Any advice. And he is, I don’t have any international advice, but I’ll [00:12:45] tell you the best piece about advice I can give you as a public speaker is always aspire to [00:12:50] be the easiest presenter for the event organizers to deal [00:12:55] with. He is. If they ask for the slides at a certain day, deliver ’em two days early.

If they ask for [00:13:00] you to send an invoice for something, send it. The minute you read that email, if they ask for your [00:13:05] meal request at an organized dinner, do not read that email twice. [00:13:10] It is a touch it once. Be the person that makes their life easier and [00:13:15] you’ll always get invited back. And I want to apply that mindset to my [00:13:20] landlord.

I definitively want to be their favorite tenant. I want to be the one [00:13:25] he, I had them come in this morning and I said, are you gonna be back this afternoon? And they were like, we can why? And I was [00:13:30] like, I’m having internet connection issues. And I’m having a hard time paying our [00:13:35] first month of rent online right now, and I have absolutely no idea where our checkbook [00:13:40] is.

Like it’s in a box somewhere upstairs right now. I’m gonna find a way to pay [00:13:45] you, but if I have to, I’m going to the bank to get a cashier’s check, and I’m gonna come and I’m gonna hand it to you. I [00:13:50] just need to know where you are. ’cause I will not pay our rent late on the first day. And they were like, you don’t need to pay us until the end of next [00:13:55] week.

And I was like, Nope, absolutely not. I’m gonna be your easiest tenant. I just need to know where you are this [00:14:00] afternoon so I can put this in your hands and it’s, it’ll pay off so many times in the long run. [00:14:05]

Speaker 2: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. I could share so many stories like that, but I think the point’s really [00:14:10] well made that, yeah, if you can create friction on the small stuff that ultimately doesn’t matter, [00:14:15] or if you’re playing the long game.

Karma, the universe, call it whatever you want, like [00:14:20] it, it bounces out in spades.

Speaker 3: And you also need to remember as a gym owner that [00:14:25] landlords are typically fairly connected in their town. They’re the [00:14:30] ones who deal with all of the administrators in town. They’re the ones who talk to the zoning [00:14:35] committee.

They’re the ones who deal with the inspectors. They’re the ones who know all the vendors. And my landlord made a [00:14:40] connection for me for a dumpster that cut my annual dumpster costs by almost two grand in the [00:14:45] last two weeks. And I just wasn’t expecting it. But he had a guy and [00:14:50] so that’s, that is a great reason in and of itself, just to [00:14:55] leverage their network very quickly.

You gotta play really nice from early on in the [00:15:00] game.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s a great point. Pete, I’m curious, ’cause as you’re thinking through [00:15:05] this, and I think it’s actually a good thing that you’re in the weeds of it now, like what else is coming to mind as. [00:15:10] Either something that’s gone really well that you were intentional about and you’d recommend others [00:15:15] follow the same principle, or maybe something where shit went sideways and in hindsight, you’ve got [00:15:20] some lessons to share.

Speaker 3: Oh, I think that what has gone really was that I’ve had to learn to just like [00:15:25] seriously trust and delegate there. I had my mindset [00:15:30] very thoroughly on how I was gonna handle the. Um, extraction process of [00:15:35] all the stuff that happened this morning in the last, honestly, 48 hours in the other space. [00:15:40] And as crazy as it sounds, after being in that unit that we just left [00:15:45] since 2012, I have not been in it since Monday morning.

[00:15:50] I just, I kept finding that I didn’t need to go back and my stuff just kept [00:15:55] getting packed and coming over because I enabled the team to say, Hey, I trust you, mark stuff as [00:16:00] well as you can and get it over here and. Had I followed my instinct of [00:16:05] micromanaging the shit out of every step in this process, we’d all be, [00:16:10] they’d all be standing like on the loading dock, looking at me waiting for their next assignment.[00:16:15]

So the best thing I can say is if you trust people enough to take care [00:16:20] of your people, your clients, then if you’re moving your gym, you sure as shit better be [00:16:25] able to trust them to make a decision on where to put some shelving they took off the [00:16:30] wall or. Who signs for the last box that got delivered to the old space, or who’s gonna [00:16:35] answer the questions when the new tenant shows up and asks you about your timetable?

That’s the best part. It’s [00:16:40] realizing that they’re all very good at this stuff if you hire [00:16:45] them. They’re all probably fairly detail oriented and driven by simple initiatives. [00:16:50] Just letting the team do the thing probably better than me has been all the [00:16:55] difference in the world because I’ve been able to just say.

It’s imperative to me that the front office look [00:17:00] immaculate when people get here. I need the merch to look good. I need the accent wall to be painted. I need the logo [00:17:05] to be level, and I need it to smell like it’s been freshly cleaned and vacuumed. [00:17:10] That’s all I’m gonna do today. I know there’s a punch list of a thousand things that need to happen in the rest of the [00:17:15] space.

It’s in your hands, John. I trust you. Do you trust me to do the front? And that [00:17:20] has been the game changer because I’m just not getting in the weeds with stuff that we [00:17:25] have other sets of hands for.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s huge. You’re really picking your [00:17:30] battles and making sure that things that are imperative are done well.

And even if [00:17:35] you aren’t in a situation where you have maybe the same level of trust with your team and you don’t have a [00:17:40] number two, I just wanna make the case that even if things were done 10% [00:17:45] worse than you could have done it yourself. You still got 90% and freed [00:17:50] up a ton of capacity to make sure that the big rocks were set.

When you’re 98 minutes now into your [00:17:55] first day of training at the gym, you can actually be in that first day of training. Not worried about, did we get [00:18:00] that cable for the printer, put in the right box, like big rocks [00:18:05] here.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I’ll give you another example of something that, that I’ve learned. I didn’t have to [00:18:10] learn it this time, but I’m applying this lesson this time because I’ve been burned in the past, and that is.

As [00:18:15] much as we fall in love with the footprint we’ve designed or the dream, the vision [00:18:20] for the space, it comes back to that Mike Tyson quote. Everyone’s got a plan until they get [00:18:25] punched in the face. I have not allowed anyone to secure a piece of equipment to the ground [00:18:30] to fix certain things on the walls.

For example, our med [00:18:35] ball area is currently. It. Ultimately, the med ball area gets [00:18:40] painted black because the wear and tear of med ball is just slamming against the walls. It just, white walls look like shit [00:18:45] after a while, but I just can’t paint that accent wall. I can’t mount those med ball racks [00:18:50] until I know that I’m not gonna have our new next door neighbor coming in and being like, [00:18:55] what the hell it, we might need to pivot.

We might need to adjust. So we have [00:19:00] a, I’d say a 10 to 14 day holding period where the gym may wholesale [00:19:05] change. The power racks are gonna shift around a little bit the next couple days while people racking on rack [00:19:10] weights. ’cause I haven’t fixed ’em down and I won’t until I’m absolutely certain I’m [00:19:15] comfortable with the way we have the place situated and I’ve got burned on that in the [00:19:20] past.

And so understand that your business needs to, like everything [00:19:25] needs to settle everything. We need to see how people utilize the space. We need [00:19:30] to. Look and ask ourselves, are they, is foot traffic logically moving the [00:19:35] way I expected it to when I had this master vision? Or are people just walking like a [00:19:40] diagonal line through the deadlift platforms and under one power rack to get to a [00:19:45] warmup area?

And that stuff like as much as we [00:19:50] think everyone has common sense and is gonna follow the most logical pattern, common sense, [00:19:55] isn’t that common anymore? And we need to protect ourselves against the downside of that. And [00:20:00] that means we are in our probationary gym layout period. It’s a trial we’re on right [00:20:05] now.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It makes me think of go to any college or university [00:20:10] campus and you see a field with a sidewalk or something at a right angle, and then you see the [00:20:15] dirt path through the field. Option one is you can pave that path. ’cause that’s where people are [00:20:20] naturally going and lean into their. Default tendencies.

Option two is you can fight it every day of your [00:20:25] life. And if you don’t fit down, if you don’t fix down the equipment, you’ve got the flexibility to be like, Hey, it [00:20:30] seems like everyone’s naturally doing this, and it’s a lot better of an idea than I had in my head. So let’s roll with it. Exactly. [00:20:35]

Speaker 3: Yeah. The rest, I don’t know, Ben, I’m gonna learn a let new lesson in the next 10 [00:20:40] minutes.

I’m sure once we get off this call, I’m gonna come out and someone’s gonna be like, Hey, we got a new fire for you to put out. [00:20:45] And that’s what this is. It’s triage and firefighting, but. [00:20:50] I said to someone recently, I said to to Mike Boyle via a dm. I put up a [00:20:55] post recently and he said, it’s looking really nice, coming along good.

And I said, basically, [00:21:00] if I could just design and move gyms for the rest of my life, [00:21:05] that’s all I do. I like this. I like envisioning what it’s gonna look like. But [00:21:10] yeah, who knows? The hard part I think is behind me at this point. [00:21:15] And honestly, my team has. Just kicked ass for three straight [00:21:20] days. They’ve just been hustling in every direction.

And each night [00:21:25] I’ve had to send people home and each night they’ve said, we’re not leaving until you go. And I was like, you gotta [00:21:30] leave. It’s time. Go have a normal life. And that’s just how you know you got the right [00:21:35] squad, they’re in it with you. And nobody was asking like, when do we get to punch out?

They’re [00:21:40] ready to go as late as we had to. So I’m feeling really good about. Not just the space, [00:21:45] but the team that’s gonna command it. So we’re in a good place. I’m pretty excited. I can’t wait to give you an update when we get [00:21:50] to our annual planning at Keeler House and I’m five weeks in and I can [00:21:55] actually say to you like, this was the move, this worked.

And hopefully that’s the case. [00:22:00] And I’m not like, oh, I to go back in time, but right now I’m feeling really good about it. [00:22:05]

Speaker 2: Okay. Maybe we’ll do a follow up in a month or two for the hindsight stuff. Yeah. The

Speaker 3: first thing you [00:22:10] should ask me is are the power racks where you thought they were gonna be? Where are the met balls being thrown right now?[00:22:15]

Speaker 2: That sounds good. I wanna let you get back to the next fire, [00:22:20] but something stands out to maybe a third lesson in here. Kind of the common thread through everything you’ve said is [00:22:25] like you, and this is typical for what I know about you, but [00:22:30] like you’ve really put the people first. You’re doing your best to be a good tenant.

Even [00:22:35] when you called the floor scraper people, the words you used were, Hey, I understand if I’m gonna have to eat this rental cost, [00:22:40] but I actually don’t need the piece of equipment anymore. It wasn’t, I don’t need this anymore. Can I get a refund? Or, it [00:22:45] wasn’t, am I, I’m imagining the thoughts in your head weren’t like, am I gonna get my money’s worth [00:22:50] or am my staff helping them, getting them to help me move?

It wasn’t. Is John gonna fuck up [00:22:55] that thing with moving the back end of the gym? You’ve consistently like always trusted your [00:23:00] people. It’s not blind trust. It’s a true belief that by doing the right [00:23:05] things for people, things will come around the right way. Even if it doesn’t happen tomorrow or every [00:23:10] time that there’s like a, the word I want to use here is leadership.

When it comes to interacting and [00:23:15] managing the people that you’re with, you’ve created a culture where they can step into those roles so that you [00:23:20] can trust them rather than if you’re micromanaging, they never get an opportunity to. They [00:23:25] never ever get an opportunity to just shine. And whether it’s small stuff like the dude framing the bathroom or making sure you get the [00:23:30] cashier’s check ’cause your internet sucks, or the big stuff, trusting your team to make sure [00:23:35] 13 years of accumulated stuff appropriately makes it over to the new space.[00:23:40]

There’s a thread there that you never know when that leadership, you don’t be a good leader so that you get a kickback in [00:23:45] the future, but you get a lot of other benefits by putting people first. [00:23:50]

Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, I guess the term that comes to mind is servant leadership. But I don’t [00:23:55] like assigning that title ’cause it feels douchey.

I, I [00:24:00] dunno, like, I never wanna look people in the eye and be like, I am a servant leader. How can I serve you? I’ve [00:24:05] just never got burned by putting someone else’s interests ahead of my own. [00:24:10] It, I’ve never come to regret that in a professional setting [00:24:15] or in the circumstances that it did happen. I’ve allowed myself to [00:24:20] forget it because anyone who’s gonna take advantage in that way isn’t someone I want to surround [00:24:25] myself with.

And it’s really easy to mentally move on from. I always say to people [00:24:30] when they’re like, what happens when an asshole shows up in the gym? Do they disrupt your culture? And I say they usually filter themselves [00:24:35] out by the end of month one. They just don’t re-up and we don’t chase. And yeah, [00:24:40] that’s not great for attrition or if we’re gonna have a panic attack about retention numbers because [00:24:45] Pete said, let the dickhead walk.

That guy sucked. I can absorb that [00:24:50] figure that KPI not hitting a mark in a given month. ’cause I know [00:24:55] that long game one bad apple is gonna spoil the whole thing. [00:25:00] I don’t know. I guess the takeaway is it’s running our business, [00:25:05] man is just like raising our kids. It’s like you, [00:25:10] you look in the eye and just say, treated to other people the way you wanna be treated.

This is gonna work out for you. And then you [00:25:15] say that a thousand times. And all I’m trying to do [00:25:20] is run the place following kind of the norms and guidelines that I’m hammering [00:25:25] home with Colin and Owen every day. I don’t want to have a moment. And there are moments in my life [00:25:30] where they do this, but I don’t want to have a moment that I could have controlled where my son looks at me and he is, that’s not.[00:25:35]

What you say at home, why did you behave that way? And the beautiful thing about kids is they have no [00:25:40] filter. And my son, Owen, especially a little 9-year-old when I’m being a [00:25:45] hypocrite, he could not call it out faster. And just like he [00:25:50] is a sleuth when it comes to finding hypocrisy in his parents’ habits.[00:25:55]

And so I guess in a sense, like the way that I act in all of [00:26:00] those professional relationships is just a. Kind of, would I be proud of this if [00:26:05] my son was watching how I handled that last thing, and I don’t know, it seems to be working. We ended up, [00:26:10] I’ve told you time and time again, this situation, this move has been this [00:26:15] unbelievable stroke of good fortune.

We had a bad lease. Our neighbors asked if they could buy it out from [00:26:20] under us. I told ’em, I didn’t think we could find a space that was gonna meet our needs. I [00:26:25] found it by the end of the day because I had good relationships with these clients for long term. [00:26:30] Then it was, oh, we’ve got all kinds of leverage.

We should really see [00:26:35] what that, their urgency to get into space is gonna mean to us. And suddenly I had them paying for our turf and [00:26:40] our cages and our relocation, and we didn’t finance any of this move. I [00:26:45] didn’t take out an SBA loan. I let my last landlord pay to get me out so that he could extend the biggest tenant [00:26:50] in the building.

They wanted my space. We found an opportunity to leverage it. [00:26:55] And my wife is a wizard of negotiation, so I had her coach me every night at the dinner table. [00:27:00] And next thing we’ve got the people who own the building, spending a hundred grand to tell us to kick rocks [00:27:05] and, and my rent went down. And so all in all, like these things don’t [00:27:10] happen to people who burn bridges every step of the way.

[00:27:15] No, good luck favors the nice people as far as I’m concerned. So. [00:27:20]

Speaker 2: Be nice. Yeah. What comes to mind for me, you mentioned we had in, you had an incredibly good fortune to find [00:27:25] that space, but this is a perfect example of luck meet is preparation meets opportunity. You didn’t [00:27:30] know you were preparing for this move by being nice to people because that’s part of your nature.

And then [00:27:35] when it came where, hey, there’s an opportunity here. You had your wife coach her at the dinner table to make sure you could nail the [00:27:40] negotiations. Like it’s not like. You didn’t know this is the [00:27:45] way it was going to go, but it also wasn’t an accident.

Speaker 3: No, exactly. And had I not had such a [00:27:50] strong relationship with these people who were just clients, that’s all they were.

They wouldn’t have moved [00:27:55] mountains to get us in here. When I told him I was in this spot, I actually said, have you got [00:28:00] any property in town that you’re looking to develop? We might need to make a move fairly [00:28:05] quickly. And I’m interested if you’ve got a building that you’re willing to clear out or you got some space [00:28:10] where you could build, I don’t know how fast I’m gonna have to turn this, but you’re the first person I think of.

[00:28:15] He, uh, I’ll tell you, he said to me, we have a letter of intent from a candidate for a [00:28:20] space across the street that I know would be a better fit for you than for them. And [00:28:25] their requests require that we spend a ton of money to outfit the space to [00:28:30] make it viable for them that I know you wouldn’t need us to spend these.

So I can walk away from a letter of [00:28:35] intent. If I need to. ’cause I know you guys are good people. You’re gonna pay on time and you’re gonna make us proud with how [00:28:40] the space looks when you’re finished with it. And he wouldn’t have done that if I was just [00:28:45] chasing him for money and shouting at him ’cause he was late for, we had a late cancel or something [00:28:50] like that.

It’s just, it all has a trickle down effect over time. [00:28:55]

Speaker 2: A hundred percent. I think this is as good a place as I need to leave it Pete. So I wanted to say [00:29:00] first, congratulations on a successful move. Thank you sir. And yeah, thanks [00:29:05] for sharing the lessons. Looking forward to getting the next ones once you’re a little bit further away from the [00:29:10] minutia of what’s going on today.

Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. I, we will revisit this before the end of Q4 [00:29:15] and I’ll tell you all the things I screwed up between now and then.

Speaker 2: Deal. [00:29:20] Thank you for your time, Pete, and I’ll talk to you soon. Talk soon. See [00:29:25] [00:29:30] [00:29:35] [00:29:40] you.