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Hey guys! What’s going on it’s Coach Will and today we are going to do Becoming The Mayor Part 2. I did Becoming The Mayor Part 1 video. Where I was standing in front of the whiteboard just the other day and you guys should definitely go and give that video a watch if you want to have a preface of what we are going to talk about today. Because today I want to get a little more into it and what I want to talk about guys is what systems are. Because in order to be good at this, be good at business, be good at running a gym, this type of business requires you to become a system’s thinker and systems is not what people think it is, okay?
Some people think systems, especially these days because there are so many software companies telling you about how they are doing systems because software is a part of the system, right? People think systems are software. Systems are not software. Software is a system or part of a system but systems are not software. Okay? I just want to get that really really clear because it is important that we understand that because if you think that system is software and you go and buy some software and it doesn’t work, you are going to run into some issues and you are still going to have the same problems. People like to say things like, I tried a system and it didn’t work. And they often talk about some software that promises to do everything for them and that’s not a system, okay? A system, they really only work when the whole system is congruent so if you have a whole bunch of broken stuff of here in the system and you go try and plug a piece of software in and you are like, “it doesn’t work for my team”, “it doesn’t work for my gym”. Then, you don’t have a system, you just have some software that’s incongruent with the rest of your system, right?
So, systems only work, when your vision, your mission, and your principles are boiled down to a set of strategies. And when those strategies are broken down into a set of standards and logic, right? And by logic, I mean everything you do in your business has an if-then algorithm built into it, right? People will think algorithms are some sort of like computer terminologies, they are not. Algorithms are simply when this happens, we do this. That’s what that is, right? With software and technology, you want your systems to see what’s happening and simply make a binary choice. So when you go on like buy a piece of software, that’s why you’re buying it is because like that’s automation is. Simply when like something comes in, if a lead comes in on your website and our system sees that and it seems that they haven’t booked an appointment, t’s going to automatically make a decision after x amount of time to say, “Hey! This person did not book an appointment. We need to send them a message and get a conversation going.” Because you are too busy to do that, right? So to do that for you and start to build a conversation, a dialogue because we need to answer some questions, to get them to book an appointment, we need to find out why they didn’t book an appointment, and that’s the first principle we are trying to figure out with that system is, why you didn’t book an appointment, how do I get you to book an appointment, right? And the system are standard to do that work for you and that’s what standards and logic will do, right?
With people which is the other half of the system which I am going to show you guys here. Let me just move my face out of the way here. You have to have the systems, you have to have technology and software and then you have people, right? With people, you want your people to be able to make the same decisions that software does, it’s if-then decision because it makes your life easier and their lives easier. And people, when I say this, “Oh! So it’s close to turn on my people into a bunch of computers, right? Like, take all the personality of it. It’s like no, actually this allows them to thrive, right? This allows them to thrive because right now, if you have all your people burned out on decision fatigue, and they are always in a reactive state, then, they are not really able to be or bring their gift to the table of your business. They’re really not, they’re just clogs in the wheel, making decisions on the flight of the reactive state versus saying, “Hey! We have this logic or this algorithm and when this happens it always do this and I don’t need to think about it and now I can just go ahead and do that and now I can just be happy and be excited and do that. I can be the best version of myself!”, versus being stressed about the decision-making, right?
So of all the things, decisions are one of the most draining things people deal with. When people are faced with decision and there is no binary algorithm, there is no if-then algorithm, it puts them in a super reactive state, okay? And this happens for you, this happens for them, and when people are in a reactive state, it activates their adrenals and they begin to have this called, cortisol dump on their brain. Cortisol is a stress hormone that is designed to curb other resources in your body to prepare you for a fight or flight situation, okay? You normally don’t want your team or yourself running around in a fight or flight situation and some of you guys are probably in it right now and been in this for so long that it just become your normal state and you’ve reached probably what’s called burnout or you can see burnout coming and you’re wondering why you are not as excited or passionate about your business as used to be or why it is not much of fun as it used to be. As a result, you probably also not as successful in the business as you used to be. Because naturally, you are not having fun doing it and you’re not going to be very fun to be around and you are not going to be the best version of yourself when people are coming in the door, right? So basically, activating stress chemicals by having, forcing your people to make these decisions on their own, all these little tiny binary decisions all day all add up, okay? By doing that, you are turning off the field with chemicals that put us in a positive flow state and that’s turning on the chemicals we need to fight or run, okay? So both you and the average person who works for you, they can’t afford to work around in that state. It leads to indecision and it leads to burnout and it leads to things not getting done. If you feel there’s things in your business you know you’ve been meaning to get done and you’ve been putting them off that is a sign of decision fatigue, that is a sign of burnout if you don’t already have it, that is a sign that it burnout is coming because these decisions all need to be made, the business will now wait on you and if you do not make them, they’re gonna keep, new things are gonna pop out and because of decision fatigue are so stressful you are gonna continue to not make decisions and your business is ultimately going to implode or you’re going to implode and the business is going to be left in scratch, right? In a pile of rubble, right? So this is called decision fatigue guys, and that you need to, this is for you and this is also for your employees and the people that work for you, right? Because you didn’t hire them to run around and be on their heels all day stressed out trying to figure out how to run your business for you, right? You hired them because they have hopefully specific skills and things like that. You hired them for gifts that you saw in them that you thought will be really really valuable for your people to experience at your gym, right? So for you the business owner in order to thrive, you need to eliminate the energy your brain and your team spends on decisions, you need to get off y our heels, okay? You need to stop doing this. This doesn’t mean eliminate decisions, right? I didn’t say eliminate decisions, I said eliminate the energy your brain spends on decisions ’cause decisions need to be made all day. You as the owner, CEO, manager of your business, your job is to make decisions but you cannot be constantly overthinking everyone of them or not knowing what to do. You need to have things in place that are clear-cut sets of logical forks. Everytime you come into a decision, there’s a fork there, I can go left or right, yes or no, up or down. You need to go over the situation and say when this happens, I always do this and that always is based on numbers, when I do this 80% of the time this is the outcome so I’m always gonna do this and I am going to accept the 20% fail rate that happens as a result, right? The reason why you’re not making decisions is perfection. You are trying to be perfect and you will not be perfect in business. It will not happen. Perfectionionismultimately lead to your business not being, not thriving at all. It’s also going to put you in survival mode, right? So it’s essentially when this happens, I always do this. I always do this because x amount of the time this occurs, right? And when you do this, you have more energy left to do the things that give you more energy. That’s your job in business- is to find the things that give you energy and thrive there. Find people that are better at the things that don’t give you energy, that give them energy to work for you and then everybody is super freaking’ happy and you get those machines that spirals up, right? You get things where you can take a weekend off or week off or you can be sick for a couple of days and your team still gonna make, they’re gonna still get together on coaches meetings and they’re still gonna talk on how to make the business better because they care and these things give them energy. Like the role that you carved up for them gives them energy. This activates happiness chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin in their brain. It activates thrival mode. When that happens they want to be there, they want to keep it going, right? We activate stress hormones from being reactive, not having systems, you activate survival mode which is going to sap your energy. So, because your day is full of these sap energy that trigger hormonal cascade like adrenaline cortisol or they, you know because you are doing that you’re in this survival mode and either that or you’re doing things all day that give you energy but triggering feel good chemicals of dopamine which is a reward when you activate or works in another part of the brain that goes off and makes you thing like, “Oh! Awesome. We found this amazing thing, We’re on the right track.”
Oxytocin which is a chemical of loving connection allows you to be present for your members and really be the mayor of your gym or walk around and distribute those chemicals back out to people. Oxytocin is that chemical of like, vibe and environment, right? The chemical that you can’t quite put your feel in it, your finger on but when you walk into the room, you’re like Oh! This is good energy, it got some good juju going. That’s oxytocin! And it’s relayed in a very mystical way but it is a real chemical that plugs into your brain and it is actually a chemical that give mothers when they birthed a child. When they’re helping them with the pain relief because it helps raise that chemical that loving connection chemical that overrides the pain that they’re going through and it works incredibly well in everybody, right? We produce an indigenous in our bodies but if we don’t activate it through stimulation then we can’t distribute it to others. When we distribute to others they see an increase in oxytocin and now they feel like really a big part of what you’re doing and it helps with retention, it helps with word of mouth, it helps them tell people. “Hey, this place is amazing! You need to come and check it out because they’re handing out oxytocin like crazy!” Like can you feel, he looks at you, friend need some oxytocin utilize, I know this place where they are just like dumping it on you everyday because there’s this guy that walks around that owns it and he is a mover, a shaker and guy or girl, his doing awesome things and it is really really important and I could tell he is really important but guess what, he knows my name. And when he says my name, that gives me, they are not saying this but it gives me a serotonin dump too because now I feel status and recognition, that’s what a serotonin is. I can feel status and recognition and it puts them in thrival mode, it puts your clients and members in thrival mode and when they are in thrival mode, they get results. They get results like their brain starts sending this cascade of the downstream, cascade of chemicals throughout their body that activate every muscle fiber, that activate, you know, cardiovascular systems. Allows them to run faster, climb higher, lift more weight, allows them to make better decisions because you are giving them a system that eliminates decision making and decision fatigue, right? And that is so important guys because you know in a culture fuel by burnout, the culture run itself down and your resilience becomes compromised and the immune system of your business, this is when viruses enter the systems. If you have viruses in your system, whether that be a pin of gallery of members, a few coaches that don’t like the way you’re doing things or have opinions on things, that is because viruses have entered a system that is compromised. That is because there’s something in your system or in the culture that ran itself down and don’t be mistaken what you might think is culture in your business may might not be cultural at all, just because you built a place that people come together and work out together and they feel good every now and then, doesn’t mean you developed culture, okay? Alright? So, how you do this for your team is you deliver systems around peo ple and these are called SOPs, okay? They’re called, trying to get back on this one here, they’re called SOPs. What SOPs are, aretandard Operating Procedures, right? This is a set of logic and algorithms for your people so it’s easy so then they wouldn’t have to run up to you everytime something happens. They’re be like, this happen again what do I do? Bla bla bla, right? When that happens you created an SOP right? This is where it’s like team meetings, sitting down with your team, and saying, everytime guys this happens, you do this. Alright? No matter how different the situation seems, if the end thing you’re dealing with is this, then make this decision and I’m okay with whatever happens, and if it’s a wrong decision, I’ll own it because I am the one who created the system, right? Then your team will go whoa, okay well, we are going to make that decision for you. You don’t need to worry about it. Why don’t you worry about being well for the gym. Right? That is what gonna happen, okay? It is essentially a set of systems for person to eliminate the decision fatigue, right?. So this is really really important that you eliminate the decision fatigue, you pull them out of a reactive state and put them in a proactive state. They also put you in a proactive state and you end up in this environment and culture. This is what culture is. This is what we are talking about here guys is I am breaking culture down to actionable steps for you, right? And when you have culture and talent, it allows you to become the mayor. So let us just review real quick, you need to establish a vision, mission and principles first. If you have not sat down to establish your vision, mission and principles first, everything else beyond that is gonna be impossible to do, okay? Once you have established vision, mission and principles and what vision is, is you know essentially your one to three-year plan like, where do you see this thing going. And it can’t be something like you know, super vague description of what you want the business to feel like. It has to be the real hard stuff like what does your life look like in 3 years. What has go right in the next 3 years for you to say that this is a success: How much money needs to be in the bank account, how many people are in your team?, what roles have you filled in your team?, who is your avatar client?, what is your goal for your avatar client?, what do you want to invent?, what value do you want to give to the world through your business and what principles does your business operate on, what is the operating system of your business, okay? When you do these things, it allows you to create culture, it allows you to create real culture, not accidental culture by just getting a bunch of people in a room, working out together, right? Because working together is only a small part of culture, it opens the doors to create culture but it does not create culture, right? So you are going to find talent and build a team. Hire slow, fire fast, right? Take your time, hire really good people. Have a process and a system for finding and hiring talents, and nurturing them and onboarding them, getting them to adapt your culture and getting them to enter into the physical parts of your business: the ABC’s and Ds. And having a standard for that. You do that then you build a team of several of thoses and you hire A’s, A’s hire Es, I’m sorry, A’s hire A’s, B’s hire C’s and D’s don’t hire at all, right? Smart people wanna be around with smart people and dumb people just wanna be king, okay? And that’s a quote, I didn’t think of that quote, that’s a quote I live by in my business: A’s hireA’s, B’s hire C’s, D’s don’t hire at all. Smart people want to be around with smart people and dumb people just want to be king, remember that, okay?
Fourth, technology,automate, right? Automate and eliminate things like just get them off your plate with technology and then also ask yourself like what can you just eliminate that you’re doing altogether. Like what are you doing right now, like just out of a redundancies sake that you just probably, if you just didn’t do it. Like is it taking 30% of your time but it only has like a 2% impact on your business, just eliminate that thing and let the trips fall where they may and you will be surprised how much you thought building up these things your head that don’t really need to be done. Then, you automate the ones that are left. You think, like hey, do I really need to be that guy who responding to every text messages? Every text message? Can I even respond to every text messages? I cannot, so I need a system to respond to text messages for me. Do you have, you know, I have leads coming from my website where are they going? Are they going to be in an email box somewhere and I have to wait for the next day to respond to them and then I have to go to my email inbox and make all these decisions and it takes me an hour to go through or do I just have a system that as the leads come in, they get a text message back immediately that answers their questions,starts a dialogue, confirms to book appointments, lets them know we got it and gets them to show up. It eliminates having to check email for an hour everyday, right? Or at least get email down in 20 minutes cause you don’t have to type emails and no one responds to email anyway, why use an email, right?
Number 5, eliminate decision fatigue with SOPs for your team. Build SOPs, sit around if there is anything you do more than twice a day in your business or even once a day in your business with a daily task, record a video of you walking through your gym on how you do it and on your phone, record a video and on YouTube, create a YouTube channel or put these videos somewhere in some sort of platform where your team has access, showing them how to do everything. Here’s how you clean the bathroom everyday and you walk around the gym and you show them how to clean the bathroom everyday, I always do this, I always do this, if this isn’t done you are not doing a good job, make sure you do this. You have that video there and then when you task somebody with that and that is their job, if they keep messing up or they keep asking you questions, you can say, I created a video on this and I need you to watch that video and follow that video, okay? And then, they go watch the video instead of you having a conversation of walking them through the bathroom again for the fifth time, right? Same thing with how you mop the floors in your gym. Create a system, record a video, here’s how you run the walk behind machine, here’s how to fill it up, it’s always on this way. Just really put your phone in camera mode and recording in selfie mode, you walk him through in doing this, showing them where everything is, right? It’s all being systemized in your business.
And then sixth, the most important part, remove yourself. I don’t necessarily mean physically remove yourself, you know, you can and you should be able to, and you are going to want to every now and then, you know, take vacations every now and then. You know, the mayor doesn’t remove themselves from the city. The mayor is all around the city making appearances, right? So, you, your job becomes making appearances, showing up to your team meetings and making sure, really all you’re doing as a mayor is making sure all the systems are working and you have people in your system, operating those systems, right? Say, you have your operating manager, you have your admin person, you have your head coach and your checking with each of these people and say how’s the system running? Are there any changes in the system? If they start talking about a thing that you have an SOP for, you know they are not talking about the system, they are not following the system. You can say, “Hey! We have a system for that, we have an SOP for that. Are you following the system? You are not? Okay, go back watch that video or read that thing and tighten up that system.” If they start talking about the actual system and say, “This is not working”. Then, you reinvent that system, right? That’s all you gotta do. You just go and say, “Hey! Let’ss find a better way to do that, you know, like we are taking too much time to do warm ups everyday because the way we are introducing the workout and the way that we are going over the workout, the way we are leading the workout, the things that we are doing in the warmup are not practical so can we find more efficient things, more efficient movements, more efficient ways of introducing the workout, more efficient ways of making our members know what the workout is before they walk in the door so that they are already prepared for certain thingsand not taking 10 minutes to put on their lifting shoes if it is an Olympic weightlifting day like that is how you systemized those things, right? You remove yourself from it, like you’ll be objective about it and say this is how it should be done. Then make it so you can physically remove yourself, right?
And then last we’ve done all that, you start to systemize your life. Along the ways to systemize your life, you as the business owner, most business people that have things going on in their business that are not running well, it’s usually because it’s not people, the old saying is people don’t have business problems, people have personal problems that manifests in their business. This is the truth. Like, you, if you wake up every morning and you’re like what shirt do I want to wear today, and then, what pants do I wanna wear today and then, what shoes do I wanna wear today and you’ve got four different versions of each those things and 16 for around you know, 166 passbook combinations that is going to start your day of in a very noisy decision routine mode. Like, you know, simplify your wardrobe, right? Make it so everything can match regardless of your pick: this shirt, these pants, and these shoes, right? Like, I, myself have one pair of shoes I wear daily, I have tons of shoes for different situations but if I’m going to work, I have two pair of shoes and they’re white and they’re grey, right? And they’re stylish and they work and I am comfortable in them. And then, for my pants I don’t pick super bold neon colors that clash with other things. I pick colors like black, and grey, and tan, and white, and things that can go with almost any color of shirt. And then my shirt, that’s where I bring in a little bit of color, right? That’s where I’ll red, yellow, blue and all these colors cause they’ll go with any of my shorts, right? And maybe, occassionally there is a clash but it eliminates that being in a high rate, right? I can make it like so I can throw on almost anything in the morning, get ready in about 5 minutes. Then, be super happy, feel good about the way I look and not feel like I just spent a lot of time on a decision that should have been very very simple. The decision should be, am I going to put on clothes today? I will put on clothes today, okay, go there, you know,which shorts do I want to wear today, which shirt do I wanna wear today, I want to wear the blue one. Okay, cool. The black shorts go, let’s put them on, let’s put on the grey shoes, walk out the door and get to work, right? Easy, simple, standardized. That is just one example of things you can systemize in your life, right? And it is all about awarness, it starts with awareness first, guys. It starts with awareness that you are spending too much energy on decisions that’s leading the burnout because these things add up, right? The small decisions add up, right? And it leads to burnout and you know, culture feel by burnout guys is a culture that has ran itself down and your resilience is compromised and when this happens viruses enter the system. If you’re spending on your personal life a lot of times on decisions that are not high-value decisions, that fatigue is going to manifest in your relationship with your wife or girlfriend or friendships and your family, right? Like, and then it happens in your business, you take it to work with you and now you are a mess at that work, right? So, it does, all this stuff affects everything, guys. And this is why you need build systems, this is why you need to get educated on systems, this is why you implement systems, and this is you know, really a call to action for you to go and do those things that you are not already doing because everyday, you go by doing it you are getting closer and closer to burnout, okay?
So that’s it, guys! If you are watching and you are on the inside of BLG then, you are already awesome. If you are not, then go to biglittlegyms.com, fill out the form for a discovery call. You are gonna meet with me because that’s what I do in my company. I still meet with all my clients first hand for strategy session and we’re going to talk about your current situation, your desired situation, and what’s in between getting you there and how we can remove those blocks. So, if you want help with that and that sounds something you just want to have a discussion about, then go to biglittlegyms.com and book a discovery call with me. We’ll see you guys, soon. Have a great day!
