Ep37: How To Build A High Performing Team with Blake Randall

What's going on, team? Happy Friday, Matt. Here from another episode of the PT Profit, Leverage and Lifestyle show. I've got a returning guest, Blake Randall, the first person to get back on twice onto the podcast. So what an honor it is. How are you today, my friend?

That is an absolute privilege. I am doing fantastic.

That's awesome. So for those, I'm sure some of the people would have listened to the first episode that we did, which was a little while ago. I'm not sure exactly what episode it was, but it seems like a little while ago. But, you know, we obviously connected on, on Facebook and wanted to jump back on again. We've got a hot topic to talk about today. We're going to talk about, you know, building high performance teams. But do you want to give a very quick recap just so people know exactly who we're talking to? Do you want to give us a summary of, you know, what you do? I suppose a bit of context before we get into it. Absolutely.

So for context, my wife and I started a company called In Power Coaching back in 2018. We run our company out of six different snack fitnesses in southeast Queensland. We currently have a team of 10 across coaching and admin and, you know, assistants and whatnot.

Wow, that is absolutely. Long story short, go put another location. I thought you're only at five now.

We got six now.

Oh, how good is that? That's awesome.

Yeah.

Perfect person to have this conversation with then. Hey.

As I was saying, off call, I'm about to go away for a week, so we'll see if what I say today, what I say next week will hold up.

All right, cool. Well, I suppose. I suppose we might dive into. I reckon we dive into the recruiting side of things first. Start with the, I suppose, the basics and getting the actual people there, and then it's a whole nother thing with culture and, you know, keeping them there for a long period of time. But let's start with the recruitment side of things. Firstly, what do you look for in terms of who you are, who you hire?

Yeah, it's this. This could not come a better time. We've just gone through our second round of hiring for this year. So I think the first thing everyone needs to identify is what their company values are. And this is something that we're very blunt with on the front end. And whether or not you choose to put this actually in your ad itself to kind of attract or deter different people, that's one thing. But I think when it comes to the phone call initially and the Face to face, that's, that's what you've got to, you know, really be very vocal about. So for us, it's really three key things. First thing in terms of values is communication is as important as the heartbeat, meaning when you stop communication, blood flow to the heart stops. And so the first thing that we care about the most is attention to detail. It's in terms of communication across all teams. So if someone is writing notes in our software, if someone is, you know, asking for a response via WhatsApp, if, if, you know, we're waiting for a phone call to be returned, we expect communication to be like number one priority for us. And that's not, you know, you have to respond to us at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon or anything like that. But when someone's pressing or you said you're going to, you know, you're going to communicate to this person in the team or this client, like, that's the first thing. So for us, that's the first thing we look for is communication patterns. And the irony of that being the first thing that we look for is the fact that we're able to see that on the front end straight away. So, for example, if we reach out as a phone call to someone, leave them a message, and we're able to see the time gap between when they get back to us, when they listen to our voicemail, that's a really clear leading indicator. Like, it's not lagging indicator. It's a clear leading indicator if they're a good communicator as well, because I'm going to leave a voice message and, you know, more than likely you're going to see, like, if the average person flips open their phone like 70 times a day, you're going to see that there's a voice message there, right? You're going to see there's a text message from either myself or our area manager. So how quickly you respond to that, we're going to kind of see that first characteristic in action. The second thing we look for personally is integrity in the small match has to match the big. And so that's the overarching stuff of you're going to do what you said you're going to do. And the irony in that one, when it comes to the ad post itself is at the bottom of the ad post, we say if you do not address the, the COVID letter to said person, which would be our area manager, your application will not be considered. Okay, there's a little bit of a play there, but it's integrity to number one, you've read the entire ad. You know, it's integrity. Number two, to address someone promptly and appropriately and respectfully. Right. So this, this little test goes a long way. If someone's read the entire ad and they've actually applied what we've asked them to do, I know that they've got integrity to follow through on what we've asked them to do. And then thirdly, it's excellence in the, in the day to day. And so we have a pretty, we've roughly about five step process. Sounds like a lot, but kind of is pretty condensed. So the way that they're able to get back to us in terms of, you know, the steps that we require and the way that they do that action, we'll see if it's mediocre, if it's excellence or whatnot. So look, long story, TLDR is just define your own company values and implement them into the way that you hire as well.

Yeah, a lot of those things are very, you know, I was, I was curious on stuff you're talking about there because I, I do similar things except what I do in my ads and I'm actually looking to like, I don't hire any trainers anymore, but I'm actually in the process of hiring a VA from the Philippines right now. So I'm going through that process like literally as we speak. And one of the things that I actually get people to do in the ad is I actually say for your application to be considered, you actually need to send a video answering a specific, specific five questions. The questions, a lot of it is, as you say, based on the core values. So I'm trying to work out if their core values align with my core values or the company's core values. So I usually get them to, to do five questions in a video format only for one, if they actually read the ad because a lot of people just freaking bulk apply for all these jobs and don't actually read the ad. So that's the thing, if they actually read the ad, secondly, if they're willing to get uncomfortable enough to shoot a video, that's generally a good sign that they're willing to learn, which is what I'm looking for right now. And then the questions that I ask are going to tell me, you know, about their skill set, you know, core values and also just in terms of their hobbies and interests. Because I'm sure we'll talk about culture in a second. But that's obviously a massive thing as well. But some stats for you on the ad that there was 200 people that applied like within 24 hours. And. But only. So I put the, the video thing in, in the ad, but only 15 people sent a video. So like imagine going through 200 resumes and trying to filter out the, the.

Irony is you have to hire a VA to be able to then have them hire a VA for you, literally.

And then like for me personally, like the, the process just so we can talk about some skill side of things here. So I'll do that for the ad. And then I usually do an interview like a, like either a face to face interview or like a zoom. In my case it'll be a zoom. For you, it might be a face to face. And then personally for me, I always do like, if they're a good fit, I always do like a trial. So if it was PCs, I would do like a trial session as if I was a client. And then I'm very similar to you. I'm looking for the communication because like you can, you can teach most things, but if you can't communicate with clients so they understand why they're doing certain things or, you know, why are we doing this today? Like, why are we doing that? This is why. This is, this is why we're doing this. This is why we're doing that. If they're not good at that, then I think retention is going to be an issue to start with. But you know, as you said, communication should be the expectation.

Yeah, absolutely.

Do you, do you do something similar?

Yeah, in terms of, in terms of process. Yeah, quite similar. So, you know, the first thing is, is the application with a cover letter. Second thing is going to be the phone call with one of us. Third thing. And you know, within that phone call there are about five sort of questions we get an understanding for in terms of expectations and history with where they've come from. And yes, we then do a video as well. And one thing we, we say to them is, you know, we're looking to move fairly efficiently with this role hire. What you've got to understand is we've had X amount of applicants. So right now in nine days we've had 32 coach applications and then about 12 on that short list. So about, you know, about 10 to 12 that we've properly called and gone through the video process with. And then there's a handful of questions on that video process. And then following there is a face to face. We shot the coffee and we're just like, we get to see mannerisms, we get to see just really how they feel. I mean, I think most people have hired across a window of time. You kind of get a sense from Vibe. You know, you can do all the formalities initially, but then you can get a sense from Vibe about really what someone's pure intentions are and whether they're there to, you know, actually be part of something bigger than themselves or whether they're there to just collect a paycheck and then go home every day. Like, you know, you kind of really separate those people quite quickly and then we'll do our practical just on the same day. So just going through a handful of the same movements that we'll do in a consultation and then following that we would go through the offer letter. So, you know, rattling that all off the top of my head. It sounds like a lot, but it is fairly condensed to a kind of two, three day cycle and, but that's once again very dependent upon the applicants process of, you know, actually getting to what we're wanting them to do. And I guarantee you most of the, you know, if they're going to be hired by a larger corporation, they're probably not going to go through these steps. You know, a large corporation might simply just do a face to face and then an offer. So. And that's the beauty of obviously small business. Yeah.

100 I agree. I think it's also vital to take that many steps in the process. Like I know like we talked about it for a little bit, but it's not that long of a process. But it's long enough to actually see if people are actually committed to go all the way through as well. Because the last thing you want is. Well, like for me personally, I don't want someone that's just going to be there to collect a paycheck and have any involvement or any type of vision or want to prove.

Yeah, you can also see in someone's, you know, I, I find it interesting that people put their entire history, their entire working history on a resume. And it's like when I see 10 different jobs in two years, that's a massive red flag. And so that's probably the most unwisest thing you could do to give to an employer. You probably only show what's relevant to the role, as sneaky as that is. But that's probably the biggest thing because the reality is as an employer, you invest so much resource into an individual to make them good in terms of what good is in your eyes. And more importantly, you're giving them your money, you're giving them your income as A wage. And so it, it is one of those things where you, you really want to take your time with but also more importantly not be caught red handed and hiring someone too fast only for it to go wrong.

Yeah, completely agree. So we pretty much covered the recruiting side of things, I think so. So let's assume that they're on board or not onboarded but they're accepted the offer. So then what's the, what's the process in terms of onboarding as a, for example, a new trainer and then what's like the ongoing training look like?

Yeah, so there's an onboarding portal that we utilize which goes through the software and the company values. And I think those are two really key things. Just goes through the nitty gritty in terms of details. And then if it's a handover situation, you know, we'll have a, you know, one of those calls where we'll record the call and go through as much detail of each individual client as possible. And then pretty much it's a lot of shadowing. And so ideally you know, the two different circumstances you look at. So circumstance number one is you're hiring to expand and so that way you can take as much time shadowing as possible. You can even start them on, you know, a lower rate. We can start them on as a sole trader at a certain rate just for that shadowing period and then obviously use that as what you'd call a probationary period as well. And then post that probationary period you can then obviously put them on a different contract which would be an employed role. And that's specific to our industry because you know, nine times out of 10, if you're a coach, you probably will have an ABN that will be different to different industries. Kind of what I just explained then. So after the shadowing they're pretty much off to the races. Now the first 30 days of onboarding, there's a massive checklist that we go through to make sure that we've done the intros, we've done the intro videos that we send to new members. Obviously we've done the uniform checks, we've got the profile boards and the most important part there is just the daily check in with, you know, at our stage with our area manager when they first come in. And then if it's just your company then it would just be probably a two daily check in and seeing, you know, any issues, what's to go. Lastly, you want to have them do a, for the first 30 days you want to have them do an end of day report and send that to you. And the reason why is first of all, any issues, they can address that on the front end with you at, with that end of day report and it's not going to kind of simmer up to, you know, a once a week meeting. And secondly, that forces the, you know, initial value that I gave before, which is communication as vital as the heartbeat. So, you know, if we know that they are sending that end of their report. Sweet. Then it just really underlines the expectation of we expect regular communication cycles. And that would be basically the, the onboarding side of things.

Yeah, that I really like that with the, you know, the portal with the core values, that type of stuff. That's something that I definitely did not do when I was growing my team. Do you feel like. Because it sounds like obviously you've got a well rounded process there, which is, which is great. Was it, was it always like that?

I think there's a, a lot of things you're going to get wrong, a lot of things you're not going to do right at the start, but there's also a lot of things you can do right if you have the right processes in place at the start. Where back in 2018, when we made our first fire, it was, it was very much scrambled. You know, we're very big in terms of capacity of an individual. Big. And so, you know, all, you know, as a individual, when you get capped, the only mind, the only thing comes to mind is I need to duplicate myself. And so I'm going to hire someone probably exactly like myself to just train the people that I'm training. And then, you know, you go from there. Which if I was to do it all over again, I do that completely differently. And so that's, you know, that's. If someone's a sole trader right now looking to make their first hire, I think, Yeah, I think definitely that's something we could, we could address if you want to go into that.

Yeah, I was just gonna, we can go into that. I was just going to ask because you said obviously possibly starting them as a subcontractor and then transition to an employee. So I've done both before. So I'm curious on your experience or your perspective, I suppose, for one, which one do you do now and the reason why. But, and I suppose where do you see. I think a lot of personal trainers these days are looking for an employee.

Yeah, of course, yeah. So when I, when I said the sole trader thing is, is purely just an onboarding tactic which gives you time to assess that this is the right person. You know, there is a lot that goes into uploading information and whatnot of a employee and you know, putting them on, on payroll and doing this and that. So and then obviously we have the, the award, you know, we have to follow the contracts we have to follow and, and everything like that. I think when you have that as an onbo initially it does two things. So number one allows them to know that they've not yet arrived. So if you utilize the sole trader and sorry, the initial contract as them being an ABN when you first begin then it allows them to be promoted when they first be employed. And so that would be their first, their first sort of promotion as a level one coach is for them to go from just being a sole trader to then going on to that minimum three hours in terms of time blocks as well as, you know, reaching that casual rate. And so that, that's what we utilize it for, whether that's a 14 day window to a 30 day window, whatever that might be. But it just allows us to not have to put in all this front end work for it to not work out initially. And so I think that's very key. The, the way you're going to go about it is the easy example I can do is this. It's like when franchisees come to me and they say hey, can you put a coach in in my club? The reality is you're, they're saying that because when they have put up ads in the past it hasn't resulted in much and we're at this, we're at this time post, you know, government shots and big boxes, not treating coaches well. And you know, this era in our industry, which is very interesting, the fact that many coaches out there are in the wrong industry. So pretty much all of my coaches before they came on board with IPC were not a coach at that time. They might have been a coach previously but then they went into a different industry. And so I think the employed, the employee of a coach, as much as it's only been utilized in group fitness, is going to become very, very high demand for the one to one small group in the next few years. Just purely based upon the statistics of the amount of applicants that you see for a franchise apply to just a regular, you're a sole trader at a regular franchise at a regular suburb, wherever it might be. So I think those statistics just speak for themselves.

Yeah, completely agree because I, I found as well, like it's a different mindset when people are in or are an employee rather than a subcontractor. I think people feel obviously a lot more safe and buy into a bit more about the company rather than just, you know, feeling like they're still running their own business.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely right. You, like, you, you want them to be an employee with a, with a business owner mindset, meaning they treat it like it's important to them and I think that's, that's really valuable. But it's very clear the roles, the roles are you are the company owner and they are not. And they are your clients and no one else's but yours. And so once those roles and expectations are clear based upon the mindset of, okay, I just signed an employment agreement as opposed to a sole trader agreement, then that just clears the, it just makes us black and white as humanly can.

Yeah, completely agree. Love it. Okay, so now, so you said obviously you do a lot of shadowing. Completely agree as well. How? Like just for context, the people who, you know, possibly might want to hire people one day, how long would you usually shadow people for? Because I probably, obviously I know you can take as long as you want, but I would, I used to, I used to get them to shadow me or another trainer in the team for about two weeks. Like a good, you know, 10, 15, 20 sessions a week for a couple of weeks. And then I would get the new trainer to take over and then either, or ideally me, I would shadow them for a couple of weeks. So it'd be like a good month before they start taking sessions on their own. Is that what you think as well or do you have a different perspective?

It really depends on where everyone's at. I don't have a set perspective for that because, you know, we're about to hire a coach now who's been a coach for seven years. So there's, he's not going to want to be shadowed for, for, for a month. If someone is only been a coach for six months, then I think that's pretty appropriate. So you got to put in kind of those, those barriers in place. The interesting thing as well, you got to realize it's like these people who have, you know, these four year university degrees who have done supposedly 500, 400 hours or 150 hours, whatever they do in terms of shadowing with those people, like it's just fascinating where you think they're going to be better qualified in terms of session delivery, but it's just not always the case, you know. So we've hired exercise scientists for, and when they first start with Us it's, it's like a bit of a head scratcher. Like you're coming in already having shadowed for 200 hours and yet you don't know, you know, insertion points or we don't know different. You know, if someone's hip hurts, like what's out of, what's out of whack. Like it's, it's very interesting. So I think purely a minimum a week and then a maximum as you say 21 days to 30 days depending upon tenure and then obviously what you go through within the consult, within the screening of when you do the face to face interview.

Love it. Well said. All right, cool. So now they are, let's just assume they've been in the company for about a month. So you know, probably have their own clients now. They're doing some regular, regular sessions. What does it look like in terms of regular training? How often would you catch up with them? Is it one on one? Is it all group? What does that kind of look like?

Yeah. So on a Monday what we do is we will do, I will do a small check in. So I'll do it five to ten minute call and that is simply just a touch base call. As, as director on Wednesday we do our team meeting which is what we call L10. And so if anyone wants to look up L10 go to Gina Wickman's website and it kind of goes through what an L10 meeting looks like. And so we have kind of our own sort of format of that. And then on a Thursday is when we do our coach one on one catch ups. And so in those catch ups it's more of a wellbeing check in along with some admin check ins as well. And that allows us to see attendance of clients program being, you know, all the programs are up to date. Has this person left a Google review? When do we deliver, you know, encouragement texts and all that sort of stuff that are purely just you know, tick boxes and you know, what you call the boring work if you will. So there's, there's really three main communication, communication cycles throughout a five day week because you know, obviously through Monday afternoon or Tuesday and by Wednesday afternoon like we have our team in at 1pm A lot of, you know, a lot of sessions have been conducted by that time. So there's a lot to report on. So that, that's our communication cadence. You know, everything there has a purpose and we don't want to just do like it's a lot of payroll to have some, to have everyone in meetings and I Think it's pointless to just have meetings for the sake of meetings. So, you know, some people say all the time, communicate all the time, send voice messages all the time, do this and that.

But.

You know, there's got to be a purpose. You got to really think there's got to be a purpose behind it. And secondly, if you were in the staff member's shoes, what would you really want to hear? Like, if you really, you know, really think about it, like, what would you, in terms of support and communication cycles, how many times and how much support would you want? Different for different people. But those three kind of, you know, throughout the week, cover everything we need to cover.

Completely agree. I think I'm on the same thing. I think just having meetings just for the sake of, you know, catching up or whatever, it's, you know, very unproductive, very inefficient. You've. Obviously, I'm curious from your perspective because you're pretty much at the size of four. When I was, when I was doing my swan, when I was doing mine, so I was at six locations as well. But I found it very difficult to create like a community in my team because of, I was like, a lot of our stuff was virtual stuff. There was not a whole lot of in person. So how do you, how do you keep your team, like, connected? Because I would imagine at times, and I have felt this in the past, it can feel like, you know, you're somewhat on your own a lot of the time, especially for some trainers that you, they might be on their own in one of the locations. So how do you, how do you keep them, like, united together and kind of on track like that?

Yeah, there is, there is obviously pros and cons to having one central location and then being obviously spread. Spread across, you know, several different sites. So, yeah, definitely from a business perspective, like, there's definitely pros in terms of. Across several different sites, but from a internal business perspective, you know, there are things you have to navigate. So look, to be honest, the, the most important thing we got to look at is how regular we do see each other face to face. And we do that at the end of every month. So we'll have an in month, sorry, end of month, in person workshop. And that's where we go through either the science of coaching or the art of coaching. And so usually it's one of those two topics. And that's purely the only two topics you can ever talk about when it comes to. Comes to coaching. So we will make a workshop around, you know, that as the macro heading and then. And the micro heading after that. And I think that, like, having lunch together there and. And whatnot is. Is pretty key. So. So purely from our perspective, from a January to, you know, except, yeah, January, September, that was what we do. So the regular weekly meetings together on Wednesday and then at the end of each month, that's when we'll meet face to face in, you know, in October, that's when we'll have our client awards. And then in November, that's when we'll have our team Christmas party as well. So that's pretty much like what works for us in terms of where, where the company's at now. And to be honest, like, it's hard to consider a couple of things. So when people are away from each other, sometimes there's less drama, right, because people can just get on with the job. When you're at the gym and there's two coaches there, you know, Cat, two coaches, for example, you can just get on with the job and, you know, if there is issues, you can resolve it, but you can purely just go there to get on with the job. I think camaraderie is great, obviously, but, you know, we're there to work and we're there to, you know, get our clients results. And so all the cadences and whatnot when it comes to culture is purely based around these two things. Number one, can we make them a smarter and better coach? So can we increase their brain capacity? And then number two, can we give them more zeros, more dollars in the bank account? And if we know from, from our perspective that as a coach, those two things are going in the right direction and that comes through, obviously our meeting cadences and communication cadences and everything we do for them on the side as well, then culture is going to be good because there's not going to be anything lacking from their professional development and their personal development as well.

Yeah, completely agree. I think a lot of people as well are obviously looking for that. You know, they still want to grow as an individual, although they're not, you know, they might not be running their own business, but as you said, you want someone who has that mindset where they can obviously still work for someone else's business, but have the mindset of, you know, let's grow, grow the business, let's expand and then, then obviously creates opportunities for, you know, more income for themselves, but, you know, obviously expansion and that type of stuff as well. So I think. Do you think, do you think it's like, with like, promotions and that Type of stuff like, like, I'm not sure exactly what other positions you've got in your team, but when I was growing mine, I had like social media manager, I had like team leader of specific location. You know, I had all these types of things to encourage, you know, people to strive to that next level. What, what's your perspective on that?

There's. Yeah, there's many different ways. This one is, you know, referring to what I said back before for when, you know, if I was to flashback to, you know, 2018 when I made my first hire, I think that's probably the first thing you got to look at, you know, now with what I know now, I think in terms of hiring sort of segmentation, I think the first hire should always make is, is in terms of, you know, getting rid of any sort of monotonous admin tasks. I think that's very key as, as really the first hire. Then what you're looking to do is, is to get more into after that. Then you can basically, you know, hire a coach. I would say that would be the next best fire is hire that next coach, but I would stay with that particular coach for quite some time. I mean, do your absolute best to sew as much as you can into that coach while you kind of build out the rest of the systems as well. So from there, like with, you know, now having an admin and now having a coach on board that you're really trying to just learn how to be a leader and learn how to have someone in your ecosystem that's not just you, then I would start to look at someone who can, you know, start to rev up more appointments. And for me, you know, we have an appointment setter who is an absolute gun and, and, and they call anywhere between 200 to 300 people every month. And so, you know, that's, you know, how we can get our consultations, you know, we, you know, because people, you got to think about like this, when are most people going to pick up the phone? It's going to be between 4:30 and 5:30pm when most coaches on the floor, it's going to be between 4:30 and 5. Right. Like, so you can't, like the whole lead nurture process goes out the toilet if you can't actually get them on the phone. So having that appointment set up for us, I think our first appointment set we got back in 20 early last year I think and they've been a game changer for us. Then I would look at some sort of digital marketing and just someone to schedule posts and you give them content and they run it through, you know, you can just upload photos and then they will create the content surrounding it, they will be able to put the captions and you know, the beauty of it now is it's pretty straightforward with Jasper and, and ChatGPT and whatnot to do that. But you know, when you look at it from that perspective, that sort of phase, you know, you've got a coach, you've got someone who can do marketing, you've got someone who can book appointments. If the only thing that's going to grow a company is marketing and sales and you're the one doing the consultations, then you're able to start to get the flow pretty quickly because you've got these other things that are very vital, but not the delivery aspect kind of, you know, going on in the background while you're able to run the consultations. And then you can start building out your coaching team and then, and then the leadership team after that. But they're obviously going to be more, you know, obviously a lot more expensive positions, a lot more higher, you know, hourly wage or gross salary. And so that's why we've got to have the, the constant growth behind it to sustain those types of wages as well.

Yeah, I agree. I think, yeah, it's like, it's, I completely agree with the appointments that are type of thing because if you're, if you aren't growing consistently, like obviously you're not going to be able to afford those leadership positions long term. And that was one of the downfalls for me. When I had had my gym, I had like a studio manager, had social media manager or whatever. But then there wasn't like those leadership positions, they weren't necessarily growing at us at a rate that it needed to. So that's why we started to actually go backwards a little bit and then I ended up having to, you know, get rid of a few of those positions and really scale. So if we, so we've covered a fair bit today, but if, if we, for the average pt, like not that many trainers are in a position to hire right now. So at what stage do you think about hiring? Not obviously you could, you could delegate and eliminate a lot of those admin tasks relatively simply with either, you know, a lot of it can be automated these days. But in terms of hiring a coach, are you, are you suggesting like as soon as you're basically fully booked as a face to face trainer, you want to ideally obviously hire a coach then, or is it a little bit Earlier. What, what do you think?

Yeah, I think we're in a, we're in a funny industry in that regard. Because if you look at, say, plumbing, for example, and I've spoken to, you know, many different tradesmen over my time, a lot of them don't hire until they're, you know, 10, five to 10 years in to their profession as a technician. And our industry, because it's a lot more, because it's a booming industry and a lot more glamorized as well, it's kind of sold to us that we have to do things very, very quickly. And so I definitely don't have a definitive answer for that. But I think a lot of people, you know, want to grow their companies before they start to grow their own leadership skills. And that starts with the leadership of oneself as well. And so that, that's really the, the main determining thing. Because if you don't have leadership in your own self and you don't have your own self in check, you're probably going to be a terrible boss. And you know, you can make all the highs in the world, but if you're not worthy of being followed and if you're not worthy of someone looking up to you for, you know, the support that they need in their career to be successful, then it's just not going to be successful for you. So I wouldn't call it by age. I, you know, call it by stage. And that stage is, is really going to be when that individual has put in enough reps that others around them can think that, yeah, that person could be a great leader. That person could run a company pretty well. That person could do this and that. When other people say that about you, I think that's, that's a good tall tale sign. So that, that's just my opinion. Now look, I'm, I'm looking at this with foresight where, you know, I, I came in and, you know, after being in the industry for two years, that's when I made my first hire. I would say, you know, there's a lot of things that I could have learned long before making that first hire. But at the same time, you don't want to be, you know, you don't want to be watching paint dry. So you don't want to overthink it. You know, I've seen this happen before as well. You don't want to overthink making your first hire as it being this big, big deal either. Right? You just need a hire when you're ready, when you think you can take care of your own self in terms of leadership capacity. And then you've pretty much done the work in terms of getting your systems and processes and whatnot in place. Because if you don't have that in place either, then this person's going to come in and be like, what is this? And then he's going to be like, well this guy's unprofessional and then leave. Yeah. So, yeah, that's, that would be my 2 cents on that.

Yeah, my, my opinion is similar, except my only other advice would be like, you need to make sure your systems are like bulletproof when you bring someone else on because then there's all the cracks are going to appear very, very quickly. They have someone else following the systems. It's all well and good that you can, you know, fix it up here, fix it up there. But if someone else is expected to follow a certain system and you know, it doesn't really, or there's cracks in the system or it doesn't work as good as it should be, then that person's not going to have a good experience. More than likely they're not going to stay around for too long. You're going to get overwhelmed. So I would say like, if I was to go back and do it again, I need to, I need to, you know, get all my systems bulletproofed, like have SOPs, that type of stuff. So if something doesn't go right, like what do they do? What type of communication is expected?

Yeah, absolutely. You need roles, responsibilities, need checklists, you need the contracts, you know, like I said, you need the onboarding portal, you know, you need contingency plans as well if something goes south or you know, just some sort of frame of reference too. And I think, yeah, that's the one thing I didn't have when we first started was I guess the, the different cycles or the different areas of a company. Right. So you've got acquisition, you've got delivery, got operations, and within that there's, you know, different sections and, and segmentations as well. You don't want to spend too much time building those out. But you know, if someone comes up to you and says, you know, what's, what's, you know, two or three retention strategies, you've got like, you want to be able to rattle those off the top of your head and not just think, you know, just, I'm just a good looking guy, people come to me, you know, that's not a retention strategy. I can tell you how much.

I love it. Awesome. So if, if we could We've talked about a lot today, which has been good. But if you were to. Well, first I like to ask this question, would you, I know you said you, you would change a couple of things, but is there anything specific that looking back at what you currently, currently do in your business, is there anything that you would change about what you currently do? Or are you like super stoked with what you're doing at the moment?

Look, we've got the accountability chart, or organization chart, if you will, that we want to grow into. And I think that's what everyone should have. I think you need to have obviously what your gross, you know, your top line looks like. So for us, it's 250 across the, you know, 250 people that we coach every single week across the six clubs with 12 coaches. And so, okay, then with that, we then know the estimated revenue number of that as well. We're about three quarters of the way there. And so with that you then have to reverse engineer. And so that's, that's probably the main thing I would say to myself back then is just obviously reverse engineer what we're actually looking to accomplish as opposed to like, we're getting really busy, we just got to do things for no reason, but to not, you know, to continue to be even more busy, but just in a different way as of right now as well. Like, I think, I think the biggest thing is just when people come on board, it's having the minimum amount of hours per week, right? So now our minimum amount of hours per week is 22 and a half hours. And so when they first start, that's what they're on. So they have that baseline level of certainty that they can then build into even further in terms of retention bonuses, obviously new, you know, client acquisition as well, but they can build on top of that and more hours, you know, obviously programming admin too. So. But having that minimum amount of hours I think has attracted us a lot more quality candidates too. And then once again, people just want certainty. So it's crazy out there, like different industries, especially in the food industry and whatnot. Like it's, you know, pretty strange. Like people can just come in and work for like an hour and a half and then be told to go home. It's, you know, when you're being rostered on for a five hour shift. And so it's, that's why in that industry in particular, they kind of have a lot of people coming and out. You know, you might go to a cafe and see a different barista every Three weeks, for example. Right. And that's not what you can have in a people industry. You need to have structure and you need to have certainty for that employee to come into. So that's probably the biggest thing that I would, you know, that I've implemented earlier this year. That has made a real game changer as well.

Yeah, I think, I think that's awesome. I think, I think a lot of people even listening to this might want to hit you up for a job, mate, to be honest.

Well, I've got another 12 days. It's probably on like page eight on Seek now because you know, all these massive companies. So that's the thing, that's, that's the one thing you're competing against. Right. So when you, we put up an ad at the start of September, what's the thing that every major franchise does at the start of the month? They put out a 2,000, $3,000 worth of recruitment budget. Right. And I always scratch my head when these big boxes put up the recruitment budget stuff because I'm like, you've been around for 15 years. Shouldn't you have retained yourself by now? Like, yeah, you know, like what if you invested that four grand into your current coaches? Don't you think that would be even happier? Like our prerequisite, you know, unspoken prerequisite is that someone has to be punched in the face. And what I mean by that is you've been to a big box before, you've been a sole trader before and you've realized that this is the tentacles of the octopus. This is not for me, right? The, you know, being part of something like that where you're, you know, you've got your three, four grand bond, you've got your $400 a week, $300 a week in rental, whatever it might be, like, you know, so that's, that's one of our prerequisites. But like as a small business, that's what you're competing against. Thankfully though, like, like I said at the very start of this, where at this point in time when coaches are in wrong industries, they're not in the fitness industry, they're coaches in the wrong industry. And they're looking for certainty and they're looking for structure and you know, they're looking to be a coach, which is why people did that cert for in the absolute first place was to be a coach and, and so not have to worry about anything else besides coaching people, which is what they want to wake up and do every day. So, you know, my mission as an employer is to give these coaches this opportunity to do what they wanted to do in the absolute first place, which is to change people's lives and make, you know, our obese, aging population better than it was yesterday.

Yeah, love your work, mate. So if people do. I know your. Your ad's still up, but in case they. They missed the boat, where can. Where can people find you if they are. If they're interested?

Yeah, look, you know, people always say, like, they will. They're always hiring and whatnot, but, like, we've had, you know, incredible applications that we haven't touched since, like, eight months ago, for example, and then we go back and we call them again and see that they're interested. So we might. We might not be hiring right now, but down the track, like, in the back of our mind, we'll always, you know, before we put up an ad, we'll always go to the best applicants that we remember. And we've got this big list of, of, you know, people have previously applied that we always touch on. So, you know, if you want to be part of that list, just send us an email@assisted IPCFitness.net or go to the Seek ad, which is, you know, for Southeast Queensland. Just type in enter power coaching on Seek. Or just hit me up on Instagram, which is, yeah, Blake Randall, underscore ipc. And, like, I love talking to coaches, even if it's not about a role, it's just how you're doing because we're in a very small industry that everyone knows everyone. And, you know, if. If you need help with anything, obviously reach out to Matt in terms of Soul Trader, but if you want to be a coach with us and reach out to me.

Well said. Awesome, mate. Thanks again for jumping on. Second time.

Been a pleasure. Glad I could hold that belt up, that title up of, you know, being the first ever repeat guest.

Love your work, mate. Thanks again.

Appreciate it.