Leadership: How Does It Help Improve Your Profit?

Hey everyone, today I am on with my good friend Darren. He is with a company called 34 Strong. Um, we— Darren and I had, had met a few years ago. We were at an author retreat and just really gravitated to his positivity and just different insight. I don't meet a lot of companies that do what he does. I wanted to show you, so we, we've used Darren's company before And what they did for us, we have here my top 10 strengths. There's 34 strengths and it's in this thing called the CliftonStrengthsFinder. And everyone on my team now, after they've passed the 90 days, goes through the StrengthsFinder. And what it's done for us is that we now have a better context around how they're performing, ways we should be communicating with them. As an example, we have one team member that it felt like he was always making excuses. And when we sat down and talked to him about it, he said, yeah, I'm sorry, like, I'll try to be better. But just so you know, I'm actually just talking through the scenario. I'm not— I'm actually not trying to make excuses. I'm trying to give myself context. And like, his number 2 strength was contextual. So it helps us understand our people better. And so I wanted to bring Darren on because a lot of times we talk about how ways to improve cash flow through cutting expenses or streamlining a revenue stream or things like that. But I think there's a really great opportunity that we might be missing on if we improve our team's leadership ability and our own leadership ability, that also leads to profitability. So Darren, first of all, thanks for being here.

John, it's always great to spend time with you, my friend. Thank you so much for thinking of me to have me on board. And hello to everybody out there. All of you micro gym owners. This is very, very exciting to be a part of.

Darin, actually, when he came into town to work with our team, he was courageous enough to do a workout with us. And Darin is like, I don't even want to say black belt. You are higher than a black belt or something, right? Like, he is a B.A. ninja warrior type of guy. He does that type of stuff and he kicked my butt in the workout. It was so great.

Yeah, well, I don't know. Yeah, it was fun, everybody. It was my actual first CrossFit, like at a CrossFit gym workout. So John was like, if you want to go, I'll take you in. And it worked me over pretty good. Yeah, I'm a martial artist and different things. My wife is huge into CrossFit. So she was doing that and I was doing the martial arts trainings and whatnot coming along there. But it was a blast.

Very cool. So Darren, why don't you start Maybe just start telling us, give us a better idea of this idea of strengths and how they maybe play into our world as a business owner.

Yeah, it's even, it's deeper rooted for us, right, John, than even in business. This is actually something in many ways that has been ingrained in us from society. And what I'm talking about here is our natural tendency is to focus on our deficits. Where are our weakest areas? And we think that our greatest opportunity for growth and development and expansion lies in focusing on our areas of weakness. And the question that we've got to ask that was asked by the late Dr. Donald Clifton, who was actually the designer, the developer, and the founder of the whole strengths-based thinking, is simply what happens when we focus on what's right with people instead of focusing on what's wrong with them? Now, this is going to show up ripple that out from people into our businesses. Well, I mean, our businesses are built on people, right? People in many ways, cash and our people are the lifeblood of our businesses. That is what can be our red and white blood cells, right? When we think about it. So, when we shift to this perspective of what happens when we focus on what is right with people, we are starting to see those on our team And importantly, as owners in our business, what do we do best? What are the things that bring us energy? Not what are the things that suck the living soul out of us or the life out of us? And kind of going through that because that gets to be so challenging, right, Jon? And we can spend all of this time, we wear this as a badge of honor. I am the CEO. I am the trainer. I am the janitor. I am the accountant. I am all these things. And that leads us to a path of mediocrity. Because here's the thing, how are you going to find excellence focusing on your weaknesses, right? How are you going to find where you're strong by focusing on your areas of weakness? You're going to hear this, you might be thinking, well, we have to deal with our weaknesses. He just saying that weaknesses are fairy tale? No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying we want to play to our strengths, and to play to our strengths, we have to own our weaknesses. Because when we own the areas that we really don't show up strong, that's an area for somebody else to really step in and to shine. And sometimes with those that we lead on our teams, they can fill in those gaps for us as a leader, and we can fill in those gaps for others on our team. And that, that allows us to go much further together.

Yeah, that's really good. Um, can you elaborate owning our weaknesses? Um, so like, to me, does, does that mean I just need to be aware of it. And so because I'm now aware of it, I can maybe stop giving myself such a hard time on why it's not great for me and then find someone else or another solution. Is that what you're saying, or is there something else you're at— you want to add?

You're spot on there, right? You, you were spot on with what you're saying there, John, in understanding that when we have certain gaps in our work with things that we do— some of you might find that you really love being in the trainer seat and building a team of trainers and training them and even going out and coaching your Clients. And that is really where your jam is. But getting into the systematizing of the business, of doing all that, that might not be as much of energy for you. Or sitting down and coming up with the longer-term strategies for the business, that might not be your energy. Or maybe it is the flip of that. Maybe you enjoy the strategy piece, but you don't enjoy the training. quite as much. Or maybe you really love getting out in the community, building relationships. We all are going to have different areas of talent. And when we think of talent, everybody, talents are our natural patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that can be productively applied. So when we get into the notion of owning our weaknesses, it's owning the areas where there's those gaps. And instead of trying to force ourselves to be excellent in those places, You might rise up. Here's the thing. If you spend time investing there, you're going to grow, but you're not going to be at a level of excellence. You might get to excellent mediocrity. But last time I checked, my wife, like I said, she's trained in CrossFit. What I understand from the gym is there's not a level of mediocrity that's preached and pushed for. Like, it's not like, hey everybody, let's come out here, let's lift, let's get mediocre in our strength. We're working for massive growth. And that mindset is part of what we are going to go through. And when we think of our strengths, John, this is the key piece. Think of a report card. A lot of times we see a report card for a kid and we think, oh, they have A's here. They have a B or a C in this one subject. So, we put a box and we say, well, A, you are already achieving at the highest level. And the real question is, are they achieving at the highest level? What if that is just the beginning? What does that look like when that gets unleashed? That's the way we want to be thinking of our talents as well.

Yeah, that's interesting. So if you've listened to any of my other, other previous videos, guys, a lot of times we've talked about identifying certain tasks that don't give you a great return on your time. Uh, Darin used the example of a janitor and things like that. So it's like, yeah, if you have the money to leverage and say, I'm going to pay someone else to clean the floor now, Because I can do that at $15 an hour or $20 an hour, and my time is worth $150 an hour. And if I use that time that I just freed up to grow my business, my profitability increases. That's a little bit different than what Darren's talking about. He's, he's talking about identifying basically what gives you energy, what are you really good at, and spending as much of your time there. Because from an effective hourly rate You're going to get a better time return on your time. You're going to see more profitability if you can focus on those things and owning your weaknesses in the sense of saying, hey, you know what? I'm not very good at this aspect of growing the business. And if I can leverage myself effectively over here with the stuff that does give me energy, I should be able to free up cash or resources or just creativity to find a solution to some of the other things that I might not be good at. Is that a good summary?

Yeah, that's about right. One thing that I can say, just having known you for so long, John, and having had the privilege to work with you— for those of you that know John, I mean, obviously you all do here, but John is an incredible thinker. So sometimes our talents are not what we just see visually in what this person's doing. John, like for you, I know some of your genius Doesn't lie in the moment. It lies in taking the information from now, getting some time to ruminate on it quietly behind the scenes, because that mind of yours with that intellection at number 1 for you, that's one of, one of John's strengths. A big part of John's deep contributions show up in sitting there almost as a fly on the wall, absorbing, taking it in, and just allowing his mind to run and giving himself permission to give himself space for that, knowing that. Because as business owners, sometimes if you have a strength, for instance, like John, that is very dominant with this Intellection, this thinking strength, and he also has these other strengths that love to get things crossed off the list, right, John? I don't want to be speaking for you, but unless you've changed magically, man, you love getting the things crossed off your list. There can be this balance. And as a business owner, what do we naturally gravitate to? I got to get this crossed off. I got to get this done. And what that can do is squeeze out The real brilliance of that Intellection strength and some of John's other strengths that really thrive when they're given some quiet space to just allow the mind to just run, because that's where the brilliance comes. The dots are connecting, where the thinking will take place so that we can talk, so that we can present those next ideas. But we can fall into the path of, I got to get this done, I got to get that done, I got to get that done. And there's this— strength that's just clamoring, please give me some time to just think and allow that to run. Taking that awareness for you, John, I think you, you've naturally have made sure that you carve out some of that time very intentionally within your days and within your weeks now, uh, since, since, you know, you were kind of doing it just kind of on your own, kind of sort of, but you've really been more, far more intentional about that.

Yeah, totally.

Go for it.

I actually, just so you guys know, like on Fridays, I have 4 hours blocked out and I treat it like an appointment and I call it think time. And it's funny because as a company, we did this together where we identified our 34 strengths and then our top 10. Again, we all, every team member of mine has their little name tent with their number 1. So if you can see here, Intellection is my number 1. It was really awesome because I did have team members that apparently would— I usually keep my door open. I have an open-door policy. I don't want people to feel like I'm shut off and not available to them. And they would come in or like pass my office sometimes and just see me sitting there. And I think some of them were thinking like, is John like lazy? What is he doing? And I don't even realize that I'm sitting there because that's one of my strengths. I think through things in my head and go through scenarios that way. Where we have another team member who's a verbal processor. And so, in my one-on-ones with him, I let— I don't cut him off as he's talking through certain things because I know that he's verbally processing where I more internally process. But man, understanding each other's strengths has been a game changer for us. I think For sure, what we'll put in the notes later, I know we have your URL in there for 34 Strong, but if there's, Darren, you can get me like a link if people are interested in finding out their own 34 Strengths.

Yeah.

We can, we'll put another link in there for you guys in case you're interested in taking that test yourself. 'Cause it is eye-opening to understand how we naturally operate. It's like, why force myself to, not think silently. People like, oh, these people think it's awkward. That's fine, but it's my strength. So like, I need to own that as well. As much as we need to know our own weakness, we need to own the strengths that we have as well.

And then being able to articulate that and communicate that with each other, because what happens is we're naturally going to show up. So if you're a thinker like John, where you need that quiet time to think, we're naturally going to do what? Assume Everybody operates like that. Well, just take some time, some quiet time to think. So if you've got a team member that needs to come in and bend your ear back, you're like, why are you doing this? If you're talking about it— what, John, your perspective on that might have been, if this person's talking about it, they must have thought about it, which means this is what we're saying that we want to do. And that couldn't be further from the truth. The big reveal there was for John, he thinks to talk Another team member talks to think, right? So when we can unlock these different areas in learning styles, a simple question— if you do visit our URL, 34strong.com, you'll see there's a resource that comes up on there that's setting clear expectations. And it just gives you 10 simple questions that you can ask of team members in one-to-ones. 2 key ones that are really important, whether you take the StrengthsFinder or not, are simply this: how do you best learn? Asking that in one-to-ones with people, a lot of times what you'll find is others have a very different learning style than you, and that's going to be the difference between they get it and we've set clear expectations, much like you talked about the team member, John, that had that context that needed to understand and talk through some of the historical components of how we got here. But understanding that as a learning style, well, when you're leading a team, you can make some of those pivots, you can individualize your communication just a little bit more. And then the second question I'll share out of the— out of those 10 that you can get there is simply, how do you best like to be recognized? Because— and people will tell you, oh, just a simple thank you. Ask them, what do you mean by a simple thank you? Because everybody might say that. But what an actual meaningful simple thank you might mean to people is very different. And the reason that's important is it closes the loop on setting clear expectations, and it gives you a chance to recognize them for that. And I think Oprah Winfrey said this, the more wins that you celebrate, the more wins you have to celebrate. So we get to a place of where we're catching people doing things right, playing to their strengths, stepping in those areas, and you start creating that domino effect in the right direction.

Yeah, a simple thank you, if you dig deeper, they actually might mean like a pretty big— make a pretty big deal about it in front of the team. Yeah, that's your definition of simple. Oh, that's good.

And then other people will be like, if you make a big deal of it in front of the team, that will be the most embarrassing moment of my life, right? And here's the interesting part on that note, John, some people for themselves, they want a very quiet, simple one-to-one thank you. But if it's something they did within the context of the team, they want a parade. They want a parade. They want, that's what they want for the team recognition. But for themselves individually, they don't want that. So, it's really interesting, but it opens up those nuances. And just like as gym owners, what are we doing actually on a day-to-day basis? We're building habits. That's what we're doing, right? The muscle training, going through strengthening the muscles, we're building habits, we're testing the limits of certain habits and pushing the boundaries to strengthen ourselves. That's all you're doing here is getting into some of the healthy conversational habits that can build a strengths-based culture that really do impact your bottom line. They do impact your retention. There's a lot of studies that the Gallup organization has done, John, that, that show a much higher level of retention. People are more engaged in their work. And when we're talking about engagement, what Gallup did was they studied why the best employees stay, not the traditional exit interview. Why are you leaving me? You're such a great employee. They studied why the best employees stay. And then they've created some of the components and how we can build that. And strengths-based focus is one of the ways. So that leads to higher level of retention, higher productivity, profitability, sales levels, all that sort of stuff.

Everything that you're doing, like, if we think about our coach, we probably all had a coach, at least one, We're like, man, they're in the zone. They love what they do. And what was the outcome? They provided a superior product or service for your gym members than other— your other local competitors can provide, just from the passion and the fact that they're so engaged. I wanted to add, so we've adopted that managing expectation list in one-on-ones with our team members as well. And for us, another question that we found is really great is, um, if you're struggling, how will you let us know? And for us in the accounting world, I have about 80% of my team members who say, you're probably gonna have to bring it up to me. About 20% say, oh, don't worry, if I'm struggling or in a bad place, I will come tell you. Now, I don't know if that's because of just the dem— like the psychographic of a typical accountant, but Yeah, man, go to his website, download that, that resource he's talking about. It's been really valuable for us. One, one more question I was thinking about, though. So if I hire a coach, that coach has a job description. There's a specific role I need that coach to fill. Let's say there's areas he's not doing well. How do you provide feedback? Because we've talked about like owning weakness to almost to the extent of Yeah, just find someone else to do it for you. But what if it's our coach that is having a weakness, um, that maybe isn't allowing him to provide the service that you're really wanting him to do? What do you do in that scenario?

Yeah, I, I think what— where I would point people right back to, John, is that expectation setting guide. And the reason for that is a lot of times when somebody's not— they're not showing up the way we want it, What is that? That is a disconnect on expectations. So, this is important for us to have the aha moment here. I really want you to take this in if you are listening in. We are really good at setting expectations for others the way we would set expectations for ourselves. Well, that is the way I would do it. That is the way I would learn. So, here are the steps. Here is what you do. Go do it. And for many, that couldn't be further from the truth because of the way that they learn. So having the pause, the reset conversations around how do you best learn? How do you like to be recognized? What— this is an interesting one as well. What do you think excellence looks like in your role? And here's a caveat. When you ask that question and any of these questions the first time, shut up. Shut up. Because what's going to happen, you're going to ask it. Somebody's going to say, well, this is what excellence looks like in my role. And then you're going to say, Bam! You're going to pound on them and say, that is not what excellence looks like in your role. This is what excellence looks like in your role. You know what they do? Lock up into their ball. And guess what else they're going to do? They're going to go out as soon as they, as soon as they come up out from that meeting, right? Somebody had a meeting with me and then John's one of my other coaches. The employee that just went into that box, they're going to come out and say, hey, John's going to have these one-to-ones with you. And when he asks you this question, you know, about what does excellence look like in your role, This is what you want to tell them. So what happens is you live in an echo chamber and you will see the exact same results that you've been getting, and it could even magnify it. So when you're going through this, I suggest you actually do it with your best Coaches and your most challenging of Coaches. Start with your best Coaches. And there's even a process on the questions of how, how we suggest you set up the conversations and going through. You will hear where some of those disconnects are. And sometimes it might be that this person is just flat out not a good fit. And that's something that we have to be able to own and move, move from and make that decision. And then other times we find there's just a difference in the learning style. And when we can, we can figure out where they're coming from, where we're coming from, we might be moving to an actually much, much more common ground that can work. But we have to actually have a process in place, and that, that particular guide, it's great for existing team members and outstanding as well for staff that you are just getting started with on the team. Be sure to have those one-to-ones though, because it's easy to just say, this is job description, go do it. And just simply put, you know, everybody is going to look at the one image and we can say, hey, we see this image. But if you have everybody tell a story of what's going on in the image, They're going to see something very different. Things are going to stand out to them. So when they see that same set of directions or job description, what it means to each person is going to be a function of what their life experiences, what their natural talents are, the, where their mind naturally goes with that. So you've got to build that bridge.

Yeah. So just to kind of summarize what Darren just said and to put it into context, I think of how a lot of times our gyms are structured. If you're having a one-on-one with someone, your coach, um, and you— this is the purpose of that specific one-on-one. Your job is to listen and let them get everything out without correcting them. You're just gathering their information. Then, so let's say your coach gives you a definition of excellent looks like this, and you're like, I don't think so. You must be on that heroin, crack cocaine stuff. 'Cause that ain't gonna fly in our gym. Like, you need to be better than that. That's not the place to tell them that, uh, for the same reasons that Darren just mentioned. In your coaches meeting, in a bigger educational environment where you have all your teams together, that might be a great place to say, hey guys, here's my vision for our gym. Here's what excellence looks like to our members. This is what they're expecting to see from you. Now you're bridging that gap without putting that coach in a defensive spot. And because he's coming to the coaches meeting, usually they're coming to learn, right? Um, he's in a learner mindset versus if you go in the one-on-one saying, yeah, I just need to ask you some questions. Uh, he's in, let me deliver feed, let me deliver information to you. So there's some practical things there that I just wanted to share. Darren?

Yeah, and from that I would say And then in a follow-up one-to-one, you can expand on that to where we're leading in and having these conversations. The simplest tool that I will give you right now that you can use in any conversation in your gym life, in your personal life, substitute the word and for but. When you say but, you build a wall. When you say and, you build a bridge. You can say the exact same thing that you were going to do. So John tells me something. And I say, but John, this is what it should— this— have we considered this? He's immediately going to put his hands together because I've put him in a defensive position. He tells me something and I say, and John, that's great. Have we considered this as well on top of that? We're building together off of the idea as opposed to I've pushed his idea out. So just that little technique right there. causes you to, to pull people in.

Yeah, really good, Darren. I appreciate your time. Um, this is great stuff.

I—

as our leadership skills improve, which as a gym owner we should be working on doing that consistently, we then can train our coaches to be leaders. Um, your profitability is going to increase, your retention is going to improve, not just on the team member, like the coach is going to want to stay with you longer, But your members are going to want to stay with you longer because they're getting good experience. Because ultimately, your team wants you to lead them. And for me, understanding the different strengths of my team members— and the reason we have the tent on each of their desks is because I can't memorize, uh, 10, top 10 for my 26 team members. So it at least gives me a quick visual. Um, Darren, any last words you wanted to share before we let these guys go?

I just want you to say— I just want to say, start by focusing on your strengths. The key to growing your business from a people standpoint to develop that team awareness is self-awareness, and that's going to start with you. And when in that capacity, you can message, model, and mirror the vision of the company of what excellence looks like for you. And you're going to have to do that at regular intervals. Just like your clients need to come to the gym in regular intervals, multiple days a week, creating the type of experience for your clients that we want and keeping that vision alive with your team is not something that we can do just on the first Monday of January. And then we're like, you guys should have this. And it's clear, it's a habit and culture is a habit. That's what it boils down to.

Very good. Awesome, Darin. Thank you. And guys, remember, profit is a choice. Have the courage and wisdom to choose it.