S1 Ep 28: Why You Deserve A Pat On The Back
In this episode of the Marketing Muscle Up podcast, hosts Joey and Ev discuss the psychological boost of "patting yourself on the back" and use it as a springboard to address the challenges fitness professionals faced during COVID‑19 lockdowns in Australia and New Zealand. They highlight how many trainers either struggled or thrived by adapting their business models, and they stress the importance of focusing on controllable factors and surrounding yourself with the right proximity. The core of the episode is a practical weekly ritual they call the "Friday Wrap‑Up," a three‑stage, gamified process designed to reset the week, reinforce positive culture, and surface opportunities. The stages are: (1) Wins – each participant shares any wins, no matter how small; (2) Gratitude – team members give specific gratitude points (limited to two per person) to colleagues; (3) Top Performer (TP) – a peer‑voted recognition that may include a trophy or Slack emoji, with ties broken by a "Survivor" draw. The hosts explain the rules, tracking methods (paper or Excel), and the psychological benefits of ending the week on a high note. They argue that this ritual helps prevent negativity from spilling into weekends, builds a supportive proximity, and can be adapted for families or client groups. Real‑world examples are given of trainers who pivoted to online models or opened new studios, generating significant revenue during lockdowns. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to implement the Friday Wrap‑Up, give themselves a pat on the back, and use the process to maintain momentum and growth.
Chapters
Back at it today on the Marketing Muscle Up podcast show. Today I wanted to talk all about this thing you've probably heard before, which is Have you ever heard this when someone says, "Go pat yourself on the back," Ev? What do you think about this theory? Patting yourself on the back.
Actually, Joey said to me yesterday, "Pat yourself on the back." It was really funny.
Yeah. And when when this came up yesterday, we were on a we run mark we run marketing ninja days once a month to our. Ninjas who are learning to be marketing warriors. And I said, yeah, pat yourself on the back. And I noticed that everybody, you know, everybody pats themselves on the back with a smile.
I know.
I was like, yes.
Makes you feel really proud. Like, oh yeah.
As soon as you— try that now, guys. Pat, put your hand and pat yourself on the back and just see if you smile or what happens. And I mean, I've just did it then. If you're watching this, you watch this on YouTube. And patting myself on the back. And at first it feels funny, then weird, then stupid, then, oh, that's nice, all in one.
Yes.
And I wanted to talk about, you know, the last few months in regards to how I've seen the state of play and what you've been doing, if you're listening to this, and how that's affected you the last few months. If you're watching this, if you're listening to this later down the line, we specifically are talking about COVID and lockdowns and months and months and months of uncertainty and having to change your business model that you went into business in the first place for multiple times. Now, every industry has been affected. We're not talking about every industry, we are talking about the fitness industry, and that's something that has been heavily, heavily affected. One of the top affected industries having to close down gyms and studios. Some people were able to go online. Some people weren't able to go online. Some people went online and there's a whole array. But anyway, I wanted to talk about how you've been handling the last few months. Now, the people that we spend our time with and talk to and I talk to is a lot of our clients. A lot of people that are doing other programs and courses that we have, like our Fast Lead, Fast Client program, and social media courses, and scalers. And, you know, talking about proximity, you know, over that period, like there are some people that are a bit down, there are some people that are up, and there's people level, kind of like, okay. And it all comes down to where they're situated. Have they had to close their doors? Have they lost revenue? Who's, you know, been growing in this time? Because we've had a lot of people who've grown this time in places like Melbourne, which is, I heard today, the longest lockdown in the world. What a record they've taken out. Yeah. And so having to deal with all this, keep yourself sane, and also too making money, that sort of deserves the concept of a pat on the back.
100%. Every person in Melbourne deserves a pat on the back.
Totally. And then, you know, we look at our Sydneysiders as well who have gone through a very long one. You know, I think we're up to 3 lockdowns now, but one very long lockdown towards the end. And that's been very, very hard. You're in Sydney, Ev. I somehow fluked it and up in Sunshine Coast.
You definitely got out at the right time.
I don't know how I did that. Anyway, fingers crossed. And so, you know, it's very hard in these, in these periods here. Now this whole 18, 2 years, we've been seeing how people have been reacting. And just yesterday, I was chatting on, on my Instagram stories. To a someone who I haven't really talked to before. They're not in our program. They're not really in our proximity. And the conversations was doom and gloom, doom and gloom, pity party, doom and gloom. I said to them, what's the opportunity here? What opportunity was my response? Can't go out, can't go outdoors, and I'm not vaccinated. There's no opportunity here. And I, you know, in those sort of situations that, yeah, it's frustrating, it's hard, it's not right. And but it is what it is. And you've got 2 ways to decide what you want to be doing here.
Yep.
You, you're either, um, probably not listening to this and, or you may be listening to this and you're, and you're a bit of, bit of in a bit of a pity party and that's been going on for a long time. And don't get me wrong, I think everybody's had the right to be in a pity party. Everybody's had the right to do that. And I think everybody has done that at some, you know, way, shape, or form through this period. And that's rightfully so. However, when you unpack your bags at that place for too long, you become a different person. And then what's going to happen is the proximity around you will become different people as well because you attract different people that agree with You're one, and they're happy just to complain and whinge for months and months and months on end.
Yep.
So I guess the concept here, one, I want to talk about just to congratulate yourself if you have been rising above the— with rising above the crowd, which I believe the majority of fitness professionals in Australia and New Zealand who we talk to, the majority have done just an outstanding job. An outstanding job.
Yeah, they have. And I just think if people, if people are still in business at the end of 2021, they could be in business through anything really.
Totally. And that's what I want to talk about today, a really quick strategy that we've used not just in this period, but over many periods just around resetting your week and ensuring that you always go in, you know, you sort of like stop any negativity relatively fast instead of dragging on weeks upon weeks upon weeks upon weeks. And we've been running this concept at COM every Friday. We do this Friday afternoons if it's over Zoom or if it's a face-to-face, and we have a wrap-up, we call it. That's the official name, I believe.
Yeah. Friday wrap-up.
Just a Friday wrap-up. That's the officials. And There's— I'm going to take you through the rules, and this is something that you could do with your team or yourself or your family, by the way. Family, you could do it at a dinner table one Friday, or for a team, it's a great team concept as well. And it kind of like refreshes you and resets you each week, even if you had a tough week. And if you had a best week, it works really well too. So there's 3 stages of the game. Okay. Stage 1 is what we want to do is we want to get everybody together as max, as, as most as you can. And we've been doing this probably for 5 years, maybe 5 years. And
I think so, as long as I can remember.
Yeah, I think we've had a relatively 95% doing rate through the whole time.
I think so. I think there was a time where, I don't know, We were keen to get out for Friday night drinks or something, but—
Oh yeah.
Um,
yeah, we went to Friday night drinks and did it over Friday night drinks.
Yes, we've been really consistent with it.
Yeah, totally. So this is the rules. All you have to do is you go around and you ask everybody, what's the wins of the week? Um, so if anybody's working a team, it could be trainers, uh, it could be yourself or your partner, and just go, what's the wins for the week? So what the concept here is is pulling out a win of the week. And as a business owner, we struggle to find a win, um, because we're always looking for something that's broken. Maybe that's just me anyway. So if you're like me, you've got to find the wins. So the wins are like a client that you trained, that's some great results. It could be a sale that you made that you're really proud of. It could be, um, you know, retaining your members. It It could be a program that you, you, you created. So it doesn't matter what the win is, but the win's got to be wins. And you can— there's no limit to the wins, by the way. You can do an unlimited amount of wins. Yes. So that's point number 1. Everybody goes around and shares their wins, and everybody must listen to the other person to share the wins. Now, it is good to share some good wins. So this is the time where you don't want to be shy. Don't want to be like, ah, not good enough, I went to go win, because there's a trophy at the end of this. So it's a decent period to kind of like really sales yourself up and talk about how good you—
Yeah.
There's an incentive here to how good you were for the week. So that's number 1, wins. Write that down. Number 2 is an important one. And number 2 is what we call gratitude. And gratitude is for somebody in the team that you have great gratitude for. So it's not anybody like that's not in your team or not in your family unit. It's those people that you work with every day or your family, depending on how you want to do this. So you go around and give gratitude. Now, for those who aren't really into the gratitude zone, what would you say to them, Ev?
Just get over that. You know, honestly, gratitude will change. It changes the way I think you view life, but also other team members. And I think it really just helps to see what other team members are doing and thank them for it.
Yeah, gratitude does change the— I don't know the scientific things, it just works. So you give gratitude out and you actually feel better within yourself for giving the gratitude and recognizing. So basically it's, hey, Ev, thanks for doing this particular thing this week. It was really good. Well, thanks, Joey. That education presentation you did was outstanding. And so you give gratitude, but you give a reason why. And that's the key. Give a reason why you're giving the gratitude. And you— we don't have limits, but if you have a big team, you're gonna have to put some limits on this. If you've got a smaller team—
Yeah, we do. We— you're allowed to give 2 gratitude points.
Now, sometimes We give more, but you have 2. Now, Ev just said points. I forgot about that one. So what we do as well, we note down. So we put on a piece of paper or I think on an Excel doc and we note down who's got the gratitude. So if I gave a gratitude point to Ev, Ev would have 1 point. If I gave another gratitude to Joey, she'd have another point. So we have a 2-point, a 2 kind of gratitude limit. Otherwise, everybody wants to give gratitude to everybody. It just happens. It's like, and then you're there.
Yeah.
And then you never get to your Friday night drinks, do you?
No, that's why we limited it, I think, because we were like, okay, we got to do this.
That's where it came from. We don't know why we limited it, but that's where it came from. We wanted to go for Friday night drinks. Okay. Now I understand.
We don't want to limit gratitude, but we do want to actually finish work on Friday.
All right. So to the 3 gratitudes, and then what you want to do is you want to track who you gave the gratitudes to. And that's, you know, that section of it is probably my favorite because Yeah, really opens people up. And this is the key. If you are having a really sucky week at that point, when you give gratitude out, like, you can't really go into the weekend with the shits. Yeah.
You can't be sad and give gratitude, I don't think. But also, I think like it stacks up because you have to like think of a win. So, that kind of primes you and then you have to think of a gratitude. And so, by that time, you're like, You know, like you're just in a different place. Like most of us are smiling and laughing and, you know, doesn't matter what our day was like or our week was like.
And I've certainly seen this over the years, you know, team members come in a bit grumpy and—
Yeah.
And then by the end of it, you know, it's all good. Life goes on. So, and the reason why Friday is we don't want to let these things go into the weekend. It builds up. And you don't need it to build up. You need to switch off if you, you know, are having the weekend off, but you need to kind of switch off through this process. And the last point is what we have coined the word TP. There are a lot of meanings for TP that we've realized.
However, I think we intentionally don't tell new team members what TP means, and then they're like, what's TP? And then so many people have thought it was toilet paper.
I think that was through coronavirus. They just said toilet paper, but it's not toilet paper.
It's that.
It's top performer or team player, one of the two. We use the term top performer and we even have a trophy. And so I'll get the trophy. We actually have a trophy each week that we give out whoever wins the top performer. So here's how it works. So you go around and you say, Ev, you're the top performer this week and you've got to give a reason why. There's one quite a few top performers, but, and you give a top performer, okay, you did X, Y, and Z. So it's like a, um, um, a Survivor kind of concept.
Yeah, we do, we do a bit of Survivor. Well, especially if there's like a tie, we'll do like a Survivor draw.
Yeah, Survivor draw. So, so basically the top performer is at the very end. So we do wins round, round 1 wins. Everybody does the wins first. Then the second round is gratitude. The third round is what we call top performer, and we count the tallies of who wins in the top performer. If it's a small team, it's pretty easy. If it's a large team, you've got to count these things.
Yeah.
And then, um, and then the top performer is the winner.
They get the trophy.
They get the trophy. Or we, when we're not, when we're remote, we change our Slack emoji To a trophy. But they get a trophy, you give a prize, but really it's just a bit of fun. And yeah, they get the trophy for the week and it's how it works. It's not that hard. Pretty simple.
It's not hard. Yeah. And I mean, it sounds— well, we gamify it pretty hard.
We do gamify it hard.
Because it's fun. And I think, you know, like it's not just like, okay, time for the wrap-up. Like we try and make it fun so that, you know, like yes, we're building team culture at the same time, but you know, everyone, everyone loves the wrap-up.
Yeah, the wrap-up is the key. And then you can gamify it, you know, quarterly prizes. We've probably been a little bit slack on that at the moment. The quarterly prizes, you know, you could do whatever you want on that.
Yeah, TP of the year. We kind of, we did that for a couple of years running.
Yeah. So, so that is the process. We go back to why we're talking about this. That is the process that we use in our team because you can only, you know, you got to look after your team, yourself, the people and the proximity around you. I think getting down the rabbit hole at the moment with items that take a long time to change or sort of out of your control is a good thing. However, I think when we're talking about growing your business, it's a stupid thing. And we want to focus on things that we can control and that we can make adjustments to. And if I know we can have other people around us in the right proximity and the right energy, there is opportunities. And I go back to my message that I've got in my Messenger when, you know, this this trainer who's saying, hey, where's the opportunities? I don't see any. That's because they're in a total different atmosphere of proximity.
Yeah.
That's because they may not have the support around them that they need. And you need to support those people around you and get them into the right proximity. And I think it's worth it when you have good clients that you train. Your responsibility as a leader is to keep them in the right atmosphere, not the wrong atmosphere. And so this is something that you could definitely do as part of, you know, even extended as part of your clients, or you might have smaller group clients, you could do it here. So there's a few different ways to take it, but the concept here is that opportunities and getting through hard times is a choice that you have. And it's up to you if you want to accept that you can make adjustments on how you feel and how you react. And I've certainly seen this time to be one of the most opportunist times that I've seen in a very, very long time, where we've got, you know, trainers who are going from, you know, zero to $4,000 a week just because they shifted their model or started their model in a time when things were closed down. We've got people opening up fitness studios because there are opportunities that their memberships are really high when others didn't make it through. And so this is a— this is the lesson that if you do something weekly or daily and take this concept away and use it with your team or use it with your close clients, it will definitely change the way that you view things. And then you feel good just for giving that pat on the back that we started this concept off. So go ahead, give yourself a pat on the back and yeah, definitely say that you're awesome and move ahead with your business.
Yep, absolutely. Use the tools to get yourself out of that kind of spiral downwards.
Totally. There's a lot of upside. So guys, get it going. Let me know how you go with it. It's called the Friday Wrap-Up. And share it, use it, and change your proximity around you. And most importantly, honor what you've gone through and what you've actually achieved. Well done, everybody.
Absolutely. Yep.
