Sweat, Science, and Strategy | Orangetheory’s Chief Operating Officer, Griff Long (Podcast 92)

One of the things we always talk about now is the failure mode effect analysis. It's like you have a project and you're ramping it. But let's figure out what could go wrong. Let's put a risk score associated with it. If you can anticipate what could go wrong and put countermeasures before you even launch, it makes your launches even more effective than they would have been.

Griff Long is an avid health and wellness enthusiast. He blends his passion for fitness with his drive to develop world class organizations. As the head of operational development and innovation at Orangetheory Fitness, Griff has over 25 years of experience in transforming startup organizations into multi million dollar corporations and has served leadership roles in both enterprise and consumer businesses across the country, including the COO of Purbar, VP of Operations for Equinox, Senior Vice President of SoulCycle, and Senior Director of Operations for Hertz. A graduate from Bridgewater State University with a Bachelor's degree in Business, Griff also prioritizes his own physical health and Wellness as a US Triathlon association coach, CrossFit coach, running coach, Sean Delaney, facilitator and Six Sigma green belt. So a classic underachiever. Griff Long, thanks for being on the Second in Command podcast.

Thank you for having me.

What was it that attracted you to orangetheory?

You know, a number of things. My passion for fitness obviously, but most importantly just the innovation and the science behind the workout. You know, as a triathlete I'm always studying, I track every one of my workouts and the things we're doing at orangetheory here just get me really excited to come to work every day. You know, we're not looking three months, four months ahead, we're looking five, 10 years ahead. To really change the scope of what fitness looks like to the member in their experience.

Tell us what orangetheory is, what you stand for so that we get a bit of an understanding.

There we are science backed technology track coaching inspired group fitness workout. So we use a few different tools within our studio to bring what I would say more life to our members and we do that through heart rate interval training. We get you on a treadmill, we bring your heart rate up and down. We operate in five training zones, orange and red. We try and get you 12 or more splat points in every class. So you're always going to have a cardio component, you're going to have a strength and conditioning component. We also bring with the cardio, we'll bring in the rower and other tools to get that Heart rate up and down.

Is that where the orange comes from is staying kind of just below the red zone?

Yes, it's the orange zone. And when you have 12 or more flat points, you're going to get this epoch effect which is going to allow you to continuously burn calories for up to 36 hours after the workout.

So Orange Theory's I mean great brand, getting great recognition, really strong reputation in a super competitive industry. Like there's just so many different chains and organizations where you can do you compete against or is it rising tides lift all boats? Are the markets just so big that it doesn't matter?

You know we're always moderating competition but I think we're focused on what can we do to bring more life to our members. And we're doing that through technology and innovation. Thinking about what do the members need to see to get their results. It's easy to get somebody into a studio but it's if they're not getting the results then they're going to leave. And I think that's what happens in most fitness concepts. So the more data we can give them, that simple, easy for them to use up and understand, the more we will get them to stick to this workout.

Walk us through the leadership team and what did they see in you? And bringing you on as COO 18 months ago.

We have a very tight knit group. There's nine people on the leadership team and we are still privately owned. The reason they brought me on is I think I bring call it a double threat. I have an extensive background in leadership development training. This company has gone from 0 to 100 in only 10 years. And what they were looking for is more senior leadership, more of the process behind what we do today with all the initiatives we do. That Six Sigma background has really helped me prepare them to say hey, let's slow down, let's make sure we nail it, let's not go too fast and then really couple that with the leadership development training is how can we support these franchise even more effective tomorrow than we are today.

Okay, so on the Six Sigma, where did you get trained in that? Was that at GE or was it at Motorola or where did you get your exposure? Those are the only two big organizations that I know were deep in it.

I got it through Hertz, which was at the time owned by Ford, which was probably the third company that was.

Big into the Six Sigma and amazing training, right?

Amazing. I got a green belt. I didn't go through the full black belt because that requires a full time. It really helped Me learn and understand the process and really what I took away. One of the things we always talk about now is the failure mode effect analysis. It's like you have a project and you're ramping it. But let's figure out what could go wrong. Let's put a risk score associated with it and that really paid dividends in prior years. When I was launching a new division for HERCS where if you can anticipate what could go wrong and put countermeasures before you even launch, it makes your launches even more effective than they would have been before.

What would you throw out? Anything that you've learned in Six Sigma that you just like, we don't like that or it doesn't work or it's too complicated.

It was originally built for manufacturing and you have to customize a little bit to your needs and whatever business you're in. But the concepts and the principles behind Six Sigma are still all there. So it's just really customizing it to your needs and your business.

How do you get up to speed? How did you come in? And especially with a very entrepreneurial organization, fast growth organization, how did you get up to speed? I don't imagine they had a strong onboarding process for you.

I've relocated 18 times in 25 years. So I've learned what to do and what not to do when you come into an organization or to an increased responsibility. I said for the first two weeks I just shut up and listened and really asked two questions. What advice do you have for me and how can I make your job even more effective? And just really got to know, focus on the people, then the process and then the performance, but really understanding the people, where were their opportunities, whether it's personal or whether it's within their area, responsibility. So I think for me, first 30 days is just really focused on getting to know the people and making sure I understood that culture. Because I stepped early on my career, stepped on some landmines by going in there like a bull in a China shop and do it this way. But for me it was really about just listening and learning and figuring out where the opportunities were.

So what did you find on the opportunities first on the people side?

People side, the most passionate people team members in the world. Craving more leadership development and more of a structured environment. We had so many initiatives up in the pipeline that we really just had to determine what is most important for us in prioritizing them and getting the right team members involved. There was sort of a siloed approach in different departments and really breaking down those silos and making sure that we are all connected, the right people are involved early on in the process. So there's no surprises or finance didn't know about this or a retail didn't know about this.

How did you break through those silos? I'm working with a company right now that's just gotten up to 750 people in five years. They've gone from 70 to 750 and they're starting to stratify into these silos. I'm trying to rage against that. But how did you break through those?

It goes back to staying off email and trying to manage the business and the team players through an email process. I would get the right people in the room, have conversations and making sure everybody's aligned. One of the things we also introduce is what I call a golden thread to every product or project that we're developing. And this golden thread just really outlines what the objectives are of this project and it does a future state kind of describes the member experience throughout that. So when we introduce the golden thread, we combine that with Tony Robbins talks about state story strategy. Every project now has a golden thread. It clearly understands the why behind it. Especially when you're dealing with a large franchise organization. The why is so critical because these franchises are making money and they have a process. If you want something new, you get to start with a why.

That's interesting. Yeah, we used to say sell them, don't tell them.

Exactly.

Does that create more of the buy in? Is that why you're doing it?

100%. And you know, if we go and pitch a new idea to the franchise and it's not vetted out properly, they're going to go right into judgment mode and start saying, well, what about this, this and this? So another step in our process that I've instituted is we have a small number of corporate owned studios. So before anything's launched to our franchise system, we have tested it, broken in the corporate studios, find all the questions that we didn't know answers to. So then I can explain this and I get ahead of it. I said, you might not think this is going to work, but here's the data to prove it did. Here's the data that shows this works. And again, getting back to your why.

So if you think about Tom Brady for a second, you think about the Patriots, you've got the offensive team and you've got the defensive team and you've got the special teams. Tom Brady, quarterback, what is his most important team?

Wow, that's a Great question. I think he would point to it. It's the sum of all the parts.

Thank you. And that's why you're good at what you do. I wish everyone could see what I just kind of threw my hands up. But so many companies that struggle with silos, what happens is they think that the quarterback's most important team is the offensive team or they think the VP of marketing's most important team is marketing. And it's not. The VP's most important team is the company. The COO's most important team is the company. The head of finance most important team is the company. Their second most important team is finance or marketing. You know, Tom Brady's most important team are the Patriots. The second most important team is the offensive team. But when he's off the field, he's watching what's happening on there with the defense so he can show them what's going on because they're all in it for the good of the team. So did you have any of those issues at all where people were really more focused and obsessed about theirs? Did you have to break through that at all or was it more communication on projects?

I think you see that in any organization I've worked for, you get tunnel vision and you start to think about one specific goal, my job, what is that and what do I have to do to get that done. What I always remind the team that we make better decisions when we make them together. So I am the least important person in every room I'm in. I'm the one who will facilitate the conversation and make sure the different departments are saying what do you see? And help me see around corners. What are we missing? So I think just making sure that transparent communication and it's a safe space where people can challenge the ideas. And if you do that, that's to me is how you break down those.

Silos on the areas of operations. When you said you were meeting with the people in the first two weeks, what operational improvements did you see that had to happen?

For me, I started with the corporate owned studios and typically in most startups you have the opportunity because you're on an uproar trajectory like a hockey stick is. We were really throwing a lot of bodies at problems with no clear infrastructure set up. So what I did is start on the corporate owned studios and created. I learned this from Hertz. Renicar is the COE concept. So we don't need 12 people working on marketing at the corporate owned studios. We need one expert then we need one expert on ops support. Then an expert on facilities. So what I did is restructured the team and then there's the regional managers out in the field who are generalists who know little bit about everything. But when they're coming back to the corporate and don't have the answer, they can talk to a marketing expert who will help them create the right marketing strategy. They're struggling with lead generation or closing sales. They can talk to the sales expert in there. And we would deploy these experts throughout the region. When I say reaching the corporate owned studios to make sure that each plan was being executed and customized to their needs. So it's not a once fits all. For every studio that's out there, everybody has different challenges and pain points. And that's even more evident when you talk about international. So what is the customized approach? So my marketing person may be focused more on these three studios because they don't have lead generation on the sales side. Then we're going to have another couple of studios that are focused on that. So it was really creating the infrastructure in that COE center of expertise concept that I think really made a biggest mark.

How do you run your corporate versus your operational locations? Let's say for marketing as an example, what decisions and programs are being managed nationally and what do you allow the franchisees to do?

Our marketing team is very robust and they have a marketing fund like most franchises. So they're crafting the overall strategy, the overall message and that is more life. And they are cascading that on a national campaign. Then as we get into our infrastructure, it's then regional and then it's studio level. So there's three tiers that we will operate on what the operation teams is more focused on Tier 2 and Tier 3, while our national marketing is focused on Tier 1.

How do you worry about this whole concept of death by a thousand cuts? You know you've got in every single zip code, you've got a really strong gym that's either an independent or another chain or another workout type or a big box. How do you guys stay focused when you have the opportunity to get distracted by what every competitor is doing?

We're laser focused on doing what and concentrating on what we're great at. And that is the science behind the workout. Yeah, there's a lot of gyms out there and there's a lot of great gyms out there. But I think when you look at what we do that differentiates us is that we're focused on the science. We're going to prove to you that you're getting More results. For example, we have in body scales being launched to all our studios which will get your BMI compensation. So if you're able to see that and then look at again in 90 days and see the results, there's proof that it works. Whereas some people might not feel they're getting the results because you can't necessarily see your body transform. But when you can put the numbers behind it, then you have the evidence. And that's where we like to always think about more sticky points as we call them to keep our members engaged.

Talk about the leadership team for a second. How do you get your whole leadership team on the same page with the vision and operations and plan?

We have a cadence of meetings every week. We meet at Tuesday at 12 o'. Clock. It's a very short meeting but it's very strategic with what are the key things each of us need to know. And then every year we go away into what we call a strategic summit and we map out our priorities for that entire next year. And, and I think we are very disciplined with staying on that roadmap. Of course there's always going to be opportunities and things that change, but I would say 90% of those initiatives we start with, we finish the year by executing on those.

How do you stay on that roadmap?

It's just execution with discipline. It's making sure that we are meeting, communicating with each other and making sure we're always constantly aligned. And we do that through those weekly touch based meetings that we have. And I am very connected with the team. We will make sure we pass through the hallways and have those water cool conversations to make sure that we are always talking about those strategic initiatives.

What system or process do you have in place to say yes and to say no or not yet to ideas? Either ideas that come from the franchise or from the operations group or from the leadership team.

When we put an idea together, the first thing we're doing, and I mentioned this earlier, is we're creating a golden thread and we're going to make sure we have the state, the story and the strategy and then we're going to make sure that we put a business case behind this. Is this something that is going to be a revenue driver? What's the why behind it? What's the KPI to measure to prove that this is going to work? It's not just going great idea, let's launch it, it's, let's prove it, let's put some numbers behind it and let's see if when's the right Time to do this.

I like that you're actually saying that you're kind of quantifying the decision on that golden thread as well.

There's also the opportunity cost. If we put our resources to this, how crucial is that other project that might get down the priority list? So we look at all those components before moving forward.

So what were your number one takeaways from Hertz or a couple of key things that you learned that you still carry with you today?

Probably in no particular order, but number one is build relationships rooted in trust. People aren't going to remember what you said, but they're going to remember the way you made them feel. So I think building those relationships and finding people's why I don't care if it's an entry level person that's working part time. I want to understand who they are and making sure that entire team is vested in building those relationships. For me personally, it's about staying humble and vulnerable. Early on my career, especially at Hertz back in the day, it was like if you ask questions, it showed weakness. And I quickly learned that if I can really just be humble enough to ask for help and be vulnerable, to know that, hey, I need some more people on this to make a better decision decision, I'm going to be even more effective of a leader. And I'd say the third thing is just empowering. Trusting your team, the more empowerment you give them. I say to my team constantly, there's a level inside of you that you have not tapped into. In the next year, we're going to tap into that. How do you want to go about doing this?

You mentioned the humility of a leader. I think that Jim Collins talked about that level five leadership and sounds like you kind of run in that thread. Where are you weak as a leader? As a coo, I don't think we're supposed to be strong in everything. The COO's got to be strong in a couple and we have to counter. But where do you think your weaknesses would be that you're just more cognizant of?

I always have to remember that people operate at different skis and I have to be patient. Probably most COOs would say the same thing, but just, I don't have a lot of patience. I will give somebody an assignment and then 24 hours I'm like, how are we doing on that? So I always have to remember that not everybody operates at the same level and just making sure that you're more of a support network and know when to push and when to Pull. There's sometimes people need help and they're drowning. And that's why I get to that. Building the relationship rooted in trust.

The school system hurt us as leaders, really, as humans in a lot of ways. They kept showing us that if we were really bad in one subject, we needed to get a tutor at it and really work at it. And then we could become horribly average at something we didn't enjoy instead of just saying, you know what? I'm really not good at that, and letting someone else be good at that. In leadership, sometimes we have to give away some of those. Are there any real skills that aren't so much strength of you but are just a weakness? Like for me, I'm really bad with numbers. I struggle with financial statements and I struggle with budgets and spreadsheets.

If you give me an Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of lines of information, I have people on my team that can translate that into high level data because I don't like getting in the weeds of those Excel spreadsheets. Like, there's seven pages of files here. Give me the punchline. What do I need to focus on? And that's where I think great leaders will surround themselves, where they have people that love to do that and can focus on that.

I heard a funny joke about humility the other day. It said, I'm so proud of how humble I've become. I think of a dashboard in our business, almost like our car dashboard. You know, our car dashboard might have 10 or 12 metrics on it, but then if you plug in the car, there's thousands of data points that the mechanics can look at, but God forbid, if those were ever in front of us, we wouldn't be able to drive the car, right? And so, and then we have that one big one, that's the speed, and then the small one that lights up when it's less than a quarter tank, that goes, hey, fill up with gas. That's really how I want our leadership team dashboards to be. A little bit more than rows and rows of data. You nine people on your leadership team, what's your meeting rhythms with the leadership team? What types of meetings do you have and what kind of frequency do you guys have them?

We have a once a week touch base with a roundtable meeting with our team where we just go around the room and share what are the critical projects. In addition to that, as I mentioned before, we have our strategic leadership summit that we do once a year. And the best thing about the COO job is you're involved in everything. So I promise you, I touch base with every one of my C suite executives at least once a week on a different topic.

How do you stay out of all the areas that we could get ourselves into or how do you stay at the level you're supposed to be and avoid getting in on everything?

I have amazing people behind me and I'm able to leverage my team in those players that are asking for more. I won't go to every meeting. You can't possibly do that. But they're great at giving me talking about the critical decision points or this came up and saying, you know, you'll need to be involved in this. Or I can give them the marching orders and go back. But for the most part it's really empowering, which I mentioned earlier. And sometimes deciding what meetings are most.

Important, you do the one on one meetings with your direct reports. How many direct reports do you have and what kind of one on one or coaching do you work with them on?

I have probably 16 direct reports right now. As we're creating some more infrastructure so it's not optimal. I want to be down to eight. So we're looking at how to tighten that. But as I've taken on more departments and more responsibility, we're still building that infrastructure. I do half hour check ins with every single one of my team members and those meetings are based on what do you need for. For me and basically use what I call a traffic light. Red, what do you want me to stop doing? Yellow, what do you want me to think about in green, what do you want me to keep doing? And then they provide me with a quick update of the key projects they're on. Outside of that, we will have at least I'd probably say every two months what I would call a development meeting. So I create personalized development plans for every single one of my employees, which is just about leadership. It has nothing to do with KPI's matrix. It just says what do you have to be more effective a leader? What do you need from me? And then there's the monthly financial reviews with every department to see how they're performing and where we, where our opportunities are.

How about your area of growth? I mean, you talked about the personal development of some of your team and kind of one on one meetings with them. What are you working on today for yourself?

Communication has been in my project plan since I started and I just think about how can I be more effective as a communicator? I asked myself, and this goes back to one of my coaches in triathlon. They said to me, what does it look like tomorrow if you had 10 times better than you were today? So I'm always thinking of how I can be more effective of a communicator. And that could be with public speaking, that could be with motivating teams, that could be with being a better listener. Is all something, it's something very important to me when I say listening beyond the words so that person that I'm talking to feels like they are the only one on this planet. And really again on communication, thinking about how I can flex my style to different personality types.

Talk about Steve Case for a second. You got to work with Steve was he was the founder or co founder of aol. What was that like?

Well, I was working for Hertz for 15 years. I had a great run with them, was never ever going to think about leaving. It was, you know, growing up. I spent no more than two years into a getting from one position to the next. And then a recruiter called me up and said, just go down. And I'm like, I want to meet Steve Case. He's pretty cool. I spent a half hour with Steve Case. We ended up talking for an hour and a half. And his humbleness, his ability to connect with people is something I aspire to. I actually signed the contract and quit my job on the way back to go work for Steve Case. And just the innovation in the way he thought about things. I learned so much in that year and a half. I was with Flex Car. I'll never forget it.

Over to Equinox. That's kind of more the large format I call the big box. But I don't know what the proper term would be for it. But how is it working with that organization?

That was probably the one of the best experiences of my life. Going from being in the transportation industry to try and infiltrate this organization where I was passionate about took a long time and I didn't apply for anything. I actually wrote a letter to the president of Equinox, Scott Rosen and said have this set of skills. I see you may be looking for something here. I'd love to meet and talk. And Scott and I met for six months before he finally offered me a job. It was an amazing experience.

You've been in franchising multi unit operations now for so many brands and I think so few companies are those multiple brand or multiple location type businesses. What do you think we need to be better at when we're running those companies or what? What lessons can the single unit operators learn from the franchisors? Or multi units.

I think the first thing I've learned through working for different franchise organizations is you can never listen to your franchisees enough. We think we know what's best and that's why you mentioned it earlier, having a selection of corporate owned studios so we can see the pain points and understand that. I think sometimes in some of the organizations we forget that our customer is the franchisee. We've got to listen to what their challenges are and try and devise solutions to help them be even more effective than they are today. Because ultimately if they're not successful, we're not successful.

When I left 1-800-got junk like 13 years ago, they brought in the former president of Starbucks US to replace me and she was gone 12 months later. And she did not listen to the franchisees. She didn't even like the franchisee and really was thinking of it as a more corporate decision that you would roll out. And I'm like, no, they built this thing like they know it better than anybody. They know the employees, they know the customers, they know the pain points, they know pricing, they know what's working, what's not working. Like all we have to do is ask them and do what they want and the most part, kind of filter it through the highest leverage because some of them have random ideas that won't get enough leverage off. But we don't have to really think of anything. They've already got all the thoughts. All right, you think back to when you were 22 years old, you're just starting out in your business career. What word of advice would you give yourself back then that now you know to be true, but you wish you'd.

Known at 22, I would say don't be jackass and leave your ego at the door. I remember when early in my career, I've always been an athlete, I've always been performance driven. I'm like, we're number one, we're the best. That's all that matters. I'm the best, I'm the best. And what I really realized, even if my region was doing the greatest, a true leader is going up and talking to his colleague. That is not doing as good as you and making sure you're helping them again. Humble, vulnerable and allowing yourself to continue to grow. And for a few years back then when I was 20 something, I was not growing and I stopped learning and as a result I stopped growing. The other thing I'd say is never allow yourself to be a victim. There's so many opportunities where something goes wrong and you can blame technology, you can blame finance, whatever it is. But I find a way every time when something doesn't go right to say, what could I have done differently? And as soon as I own it, I'm actually able to get on with it and be more accountable. So I don't spend a lot of time pointing fingers at. I spend a lot of time saying, what did I do? I didn't ask the right questions. I should ask better questions.

Griff Long, the CEO for orangetheory Fitness, thank you so much for being with us on the Second In Command podcast.

Thank you. Appreciate your time.

Yeah, it was amazing. To be a really good CEO, you.

Have to be good at operations, you have to be good at basic company systems, right? That's the exact thing you don't want to do as a CEO. What I would suggest for anyone who wants to have the seat is to say, can you give up the control of being the one who decides how.

Things are done and just start saying, here's what I want to happen?