Watch these 66 mins if you want to build a $10,000,000 company in 2023

What I want to do today is talk about how to get other people to do stuff like making money okay so these are the principles like I said that we have used to build gym launch Prestige labs and now acquisition.com and all of the portfolio companies within it and so let's Dive In so here's what most people do and you heard Alex talk about this a little bit yesterday and I know kale touched on it As well in terms of like what do you need to really do to grow your business right well most people

do is they have a small business right and they're like okay I have a small business so it makes sense that in order to grow my business I need more traffic I need more sales I need to go from Facebook to tick tock I need to add in Tick Tock I need to get a YouTube I need to do content I need more people I need more money Right who has ever done this and you've added more and your business has still stayed small me too right and so what happens is not even that it

stays small it's that you have less conversions you get higher turn feels like chaos you have no data or numbers to rely on and you have increased overwhelm who's felt that you like add teammates and you're like why the [ __ ] Is it worse right we've all been there like this makes no sense I'm spending more money I'm trying harder and I'm making less money like frustrating right and that's because this is actually not how you grow business and there is a step in between so before you add in all of the amazing stuff

that you're learning here we want to make sure that you're actually getting the most out of what you're doing now so what is it that makes a small Business into a big business right it's really something quite boring which I call the five principles of management right and bear with me here let me tell you why this is important okay so who here has been on a sports team I figured yeah guess who hasn't um if business is like a sports team does it make sense to constantly add more players or to ensure that we

have the best coach with the best practices First best coach right yes exactly okay the average coach on a sports team actually has a 30 variation on team success crazy right that is huge okay ironically I looked this up the average CEO or owner of the business whatever you want to call yourself right has almost the same influence on a business right and I know this because I lived it so I want to give you guys a little bit Of context as to why I actually am so passionate about this stuff so has anyone ever

worked at a big box gym I feel like a lot of people can hear what yeah amazing uh so my first job out of college was actually at 24 Hour Fitness and I moved out there I got my degree in exercise science moved out there and I was like I need to make [ __ ] money because I have like five thousand dollars my rent's 1200 a month And like I don't know what I'm doing right so I got a job at 24 Hour Fitness because it was the first gym that was like you can

immediately go and sell versus like some of them that you have like 90 day probation and stuff like that and I was like I don't have time I'm not gonna be able to pay my rent right so I got a job at 24. never had sold before literally just fresh out of college understood exercise had lost a bunch of weight myself helped people on The side right and I had a boss and his name was Mike and Mike was the manager of that 24 Hour Fitness and Mike I would say is the reason that I

did not quit sales right when there was girls sitting outside crying on the curb I had Mike who was a fantastic manager and leader who was the reason I stayed with it why Mike was a great communicator he was predictable meaning like he was at work every day he showed up with Enthusiasm he was excited he was constantly encouraging right so it's like every time I didn't make a sale I was like [ __ ] like I'm not good at this like maybe I'm not cut out for it he was like dude you've got this

like I know you can do it like this is something that you should stick with so he was constantly a voice of reason and positivity he was fair but he also didn't sugarcoat it right so it's like when someone was Sucking he wasn't like oh you're doing amazing he's like yeah it's pretty [ __ ] bad but like we can work on it right and I think that's really what everybody wants and at the end of the day he made a really hard job fun has anyone here been in sales before you're basically all selling

because you're business owners um but that was why I stuck with it and honestly I'm really blessed that I had him as a boss because it was such a good Experience and I really think that that is the reason that I continue to stick with it and I didn't just like immediately leave and go do something else he was just such a great leader unfortunately he was such a great leader that they said Mike we need you to leave and open a new location I was like [ __ ] okay well that's weird but I'd

never been somewhere before where they would take one leader out and bring another one in So I didn't really think like much is going to change right little did I know not Mike Cayman okay not Mike if I can give you a clear idea of what it was like he came in and I remember the first meeting I think in the first two minutes I heard the word [ __ ] like seven times he was like we're gonna [ __ ] turn this [ __ ] around we're gonna [ __ ] get to work you

guys aren't we're not [ __ ] around here anymore and I was like we're the top Performing gym in the region in all of California and all of the West Coast we were the top in personal training sales and he comes in and talks to us like we're eating [ __ ] and I was like what the and we're all looking at each other and they're like we're the best on the west coast what are you saying right like so out of context very unclear communication right so he's talking about how terrible we are but

he's not telling us what we're doing that's Terrible because obviously it's not the sales since we're [ __ ] killing it right uh he was unpredictable he we never knew if he was going to be in the office or not sometimes he wouldn't even show up to the team meetings we'd like to be all sitting there and he just like wouldn't be there we're like all right guess we're running it ourselves right and then he was fear-based I'll never forget so like many trainers do um when I knew that he was going to be The

one there for a long period of time I was like well I'm clearly going to leave so I stopped selling people into my roster at 24. and I remember he said to me one day I remember it's clear as day he was like Layla if you don't hit quota this month I'm going to run you over with my truck back up run you over again and let you on fire yeah I was like [ __ ] off um that was when I was like I'm definitely leaving Um so I think we could all say that

he was pretty unfair made a lot of assumptions and he made a really hard job freaking horrible like everyone ended up leaving right and can you guess what happened in a short three months yeah well I wish uh you know he went to a different location but um no we went from breaking records to actually like mediocre like we fell below even the average of a location And all the top trainers including myself left and this is experience is what put me on a mission to create a business where people actually genuinely loved working because

I myself understood the difference of what it's like to genuinely love working somewhere versus be somewhere where you hate it and you dread it and you cry in your car on the way to work every day because you just hate it it feels awful And it's because I knew firsthand what it felt like and I know not everybody in this room has had that opportunity I think some of us have had jobs some of us have never had a job right but I really am grateful for that because I believe that that is what put

me on the path to build a place where people genuinely want to work and so what that has taught me has to figure out the five principles of management now I want to be really Explicit here these are the principles that I use does this mean that this is all encompassing of anything you're ever going to hear like [ __ ] no there's probably plenty of people like this is completely wrong and there's all these other things that's fine but today we're going to talk about these five because these are the five that I have

used in every business that I have grown and in all the businesses that we advise I teach them these things sound good Cool so what I would love is that what I don't like is when people leave a talk and they walk away and they're like that was amazing and I feel good but then there's like no [ __ ] action taken like I am execution so what I would love is if you guys take notes if you take screenshots if you take notes on your phone and I actually want to conduct this in a

way where you can rate yourselves on these five principles yeah Amazing Okay cool so have something else you can rate yourselves I would love it if you can do that because I'm going to ask you to share with some people at the end cool amazing so let's talk about the first piece that goes into this okay if you're trying to build a place where people actually want to come to work it is keeping expectations clear okay so what are expectations because I Think everyone talks about that like gotta set expectations I'm like okay what the

[ __ ] is that let's define it right expectations are the verbalization of how someone should act or something should be done okay so I'll give you an example which is you could tell your kid make your bed and it could end up looking like [ __ ] like this right anyone have said that like clean a room and you look you're like Really like it's still messy right or you could say make your bed like a five-star hotel would it's much more explicit right think about the imagery that you create just with adding in

that one piece of information that is how we set expectations and so often what expectations are is they're the unsaid Rules of Engagement right they're the non-negotiable agreed upon behaviors and Norms that everyone On the team is held to based on the values of the organization right often unsaid but without properly defined expectations or spoken expectations nobody understands how to play or win the game right because how often have you heard this right you bring someone new on the team and you're like amazing they were say it's a coach and they were a coach at

a gym that was down the street and You bring them in they're like amazing they have experience they're now coaching my facility this is going to be great but the difference is that the gym down the street was like playing Monopoly that was the game they were playing and your gym they're playing checkers because as the founder as a CEO as the one who owns the business you define the rules of the game and you define what it means to win and every single person has Different rules and so I myself have experienced this when

we built gym launch having somebody was ahead of customer success versus building Allen ahead of customer success completely different role completely different person we need and so what you have to understand is that even if somebody has experience and you expect them to come in and understand it's like well this is so obvious you're a trainer it's so obvious You're a coach you have to State the obvious and I think that's where most people Miss is that expectations honestly most of the time are saying the [ __ ] that you're like this I think this

is completely obvious but they don't know because where they were it might have been completely different and so in businesses there are really four levels of expectations now for the Sake of time and efficiency and focus I want to talk about the one today that I believe is the most important for your businesses and that is core values okay I'm sure you've all heard of core values many of you have them especially if you're at gym launch right who has core values amazing good first step okay so what or core values and this is the

piece that I want you guys understand is that they are the highest Level of expectations so when people ask me they're like how do you get tell people what to do it's like how do I get this person do that start here this is the highest level of expectations that you could set with anybody on your team if you actually live and die by the values that you set with the organization it's where everything else stems from so what are they really right they are the root beliefs that the organization Operates from so they are

the principal perspectives okay so it's like a perspective you see things through these values that guide the organization's Behavior okay so a lot of people instead of having values or when they have very weak values they lead with rules so what does that look like right rules would be having a list of things that people need to do so let's say that you hire a trainer and they are Running classes for you and you might have a checklist in fact I know some of you do have these you have like a 40 page sop with

all the things that they need to do to run a [ __ ] class right or the best gyms are run by values right and the best businesses are run by values if you lead with values you can get people to adhere to 99 of what you need them to right so say speed is King is your value right so do I need to have A set of rules that says clock in every day by 8 AM sharp respond every teammate within 120 seconds respond to every lead within 60 Seconds instead of saying all those

rules you set the one thing which is the value which is speed is King now in contrast to that different values mean different things so to be clear at gym launch we have a value do the boring work I have a friend who has a business in Tech and their value is always innovate so what's the difference between the two right well when they have like this new shiny amazing idea people actually pursue it consistently they're like amazing always innovate we should continue to do that like next big thing and a lot of that is

because it's pretty much Boomer bust in Tech and so it's like we should always be innovating trying to see if we can keep up with the market because people in Tech can go out Of business like that whereas in this business we need to do the boring work because believe it or not this industry does not innovate as quickly as Tech you guys probably know that by now and so it makes more sense to have a value like do the boring work and to have people who adhere to that kind of value and who are

willing to get one percent two percent three percent better over every month And I know Alex spoke to that yesterday he was talking about how kale is a fantastic CEO for this company because that's what he does and that's the truth if kale into a tech company he would either have to adapt or he would feel like it wasn't a fit because they are run by completely separate separate values and separate core values does that make sense great so think about it like this If you're in the restaurant business and a customer were to come

in at 11 15 and they wanted eggs but breakfast ended at 11 o'clock how does your employee know without a set of rules like sop 70 pages long that it is okay to serve eggs or not like really think about it how do they know if that's okay do you expect them to always Delight the customer or do you expect them to uphold the agreed upon serving hours That's the question that's going to pose in their mind and what you have to understand is that this is different based on the business so how many of

you guys would think that if you went to McDonald's they would give you eggs if it's past 11. I don't know if they serve until 11 I have no [ __ ] idea but if you asked for eggs when it was past breakfast do you think McDonald's would give it to you [ __ ] no they don't give a [ __ ] right but if you go to like Stacy's mom and pop breakfast burrito something I don't even know if that's a thing but like and you were like can I get eggs past 11 she's

probably like of course just like give them eggs past 11 because they're gonna [ __ ] come back again if you do that right and those are those behaviors that you want to drive your value should represent those behaviors And so you want to think about that in terms of your business in terms of what are the things the behaviors that you need people to constantly exemplify tie those into your values and repeat them because the thing is is that the average employee does not believe something until they hear it seven times the one thing

that I feel like if anything in my career I've gotten better at now is repetition and I still feel like I suck at it but I feel like I've Definitely gotten better at it than I was when we were in gym launch like we said our core values a lot but I think now it's like every single thing is tied into the core values the partners that we bring on at acquisition.com the people that we bring onto acquisition.com the decisions that we make of what companies are going to invest in What markets we're going to

invest in what industries we're going to work with The types of companies so I'll give you an example right one of our core values is unimpeachable character so no judgment here but when we have and only fans or a porn company come to us that fits all the criteria do you think that we're going to invest in that company no because it just doesn't fit with our values I have nothing against any of those things people do their own thing but like that is just not for us and it Wouldn't be something like when Alex

talked about the bouquet of brand values in a way are the internal brand of your company and so would that fit with the bouquet no it would make it look wilted so what I want you guys to do is rate your scale on a rate your scale rate yourself on a scale of one to ten in terms of expectations one is like it's abysmal I have like no expectations I actually really need to work on this and I suck and I should be here and listen more 10 is like I don't need to listen this

[ __ ] awesome so we covered expectations let's move on to the second one you guys know this one which is why I'm excited for it accountability who here has accountability in their business is that part of the service you offer yep wonderful So what is accountability let's define it for the sake of this conversation or presentation accountability is the quality or state of being responsible to one's obligations okay so holding someone accountable means holding them responsible for their actions and results as a person who manages people it is your job to let people know

let your direct reports know let your team know How they are doing in relation to how they are expected to be doing so when people like how do I hold people accountable I'm like oh my God it's this like how are you doing versus like how do you how are you supposed to be doing right and it is your job now where I've seen this go wrong in so many cases is that we believe that it is the job of somebody else on the team there was a time when I thought this was A job

for a trainer for a coach for a general manager or manager but I realize that is not the case in fact it is the number one job of the CEO and of the founder because what you do is you don't delegate accountability you disseminate it down by holding whether you have an operations manager a head of sales a head coach whatever it is those people right below you you hold them the most accountable so that then it disseminates Down from them into the rest of the team does that check out amazing there was a time

where I thought that if you hire experienced enough people you don't need to hold them accountable I was [ __ ] wrong and it took me three years to figure that out because what I did was that I was I didn't understand that it's really not CEO it is Chief accountability officer you are the one that holds the standards for the whole Organization and the way that you do that so that everyone else sees is how you hold your leaders responsible even if it's just one person with you I swear like if you have an

operations manager like that's it but like they do everything you need to pour all your energy into that person so they can disseminate it down to everybody else because what you do to them is what they will mimic to everybody else Now what are symptoms of low accountability on teams so if you're in this room right now and you're like I don't know if we have low accountability or not I can tell you what it looks like because I've been there on the hard science side of this you would have a low Revenue per head

count so even if your gym has high Revenue it might be like well I also have a lot of employees and therefore I don't make that much money You have hidden expenses maybe things you didn't know you were paying for you have low sales upsells and cross sales and you have high churn with employees I can't tell you my times it's like I can't get anyone to keep working at my gym I'm like low accountability now on the behavioral side of things what that looks like is probably a lot of complaining from your employees uh

probably you resenting your team and Feeling the need to like talk [ __ ] about them when they're not there unfinished projects and things that don't get done and high activity with low output these are all things that in a business are a symptom of low accountability and I can tell you because I [ __ ] see it all the time in companies that we look at it's like people think you need to like completely redo the strategy of a company it's like oh my God we need to Just hold people accountable it's a lot

easier than that and I say that because when we ran gym launch in 2018 we had 120 full-time employees and some of the team in the back knows this story and lived it um and at that point in time I didn't really understand the accountability like I I didn't repeat things enough I delegated the responsibility of accountability to the leadership team And I didn't really fully understand how important it was and because of that we had really low effectiveness of the team and it felt really bad in fact there was a day when Alex and

I were on a walk and we looked at like the bank account or something and we're like holy [ __ ] we just had the biggest month ever I think it was like 4.5 million dollars we're like I can't believe I'm like 24 which made 4.5 million dollars in one month like that's Insane remember I looked at him and I was like I [ __ ] hate this he was like what I was like I literally feel like I'm doing everything I feel like the team is so ineffective I feel like people aren't actually doing

their job like I feel like it's all wrong he was like don't do anything it's still working though and I was like but I knew I just like knew in my gut I was like something's wrong and honestly What was more frustrating than anything has ever felt this like I knew my ignorance was the issue I'd never done it before I never built a company that big it was so frustrating and now all I ever did was strive to be the absolute best leader possible but sometimes you just aren't there yet and what I realized

was I kind of had a conversation with a friend of mine and I said I feel like everyone on the team like like literally a third of the team Is not doing anything I don't know what to do she was like I think you do know what to do I was like what's that she's like it's your fault I was like yeah [ __ ] it is my fault should I can't fire myself though because own half the company so here we are um so I really sought out to understood what I was doing wrong

and that was when it all came back to accountability and what I realized is that I just wasn't Holding people accountable on the team I wasn't telling them what they needed to do I wasn't setting expectations I was behind their back thinking about how shitty they were doing but not really telling them well enough to their face and so I started doing it I made a commitment I was like I'm not gonna do this anymore because I was too nice I was like too accepting I was too nice I didn't set the standards High Enough

and so finally when I turn that around We went from 120 full-time employees to 75. why because when you start doing that you realize the people that have just been skating by the whole time and we held the same Revenue did that suck yeah [ __ ] blue it was like literally the lowest of my career because once I started holding people accountable people got pissed people got mad people didn't like we were doing They felt like the company was changing they felt like things were like and it was all because I was trying to

raise everyone else up and I made them aware of it I was like listen I've been [ __ ] up I haven't been holding you guys accountable but some people joined that team because they liked that they didn't like being held accountable but I can tell you it was the best thing we ever did for the business that being said what I realized is this Is that accountability is essentially the glue between the commitment someone makes and the result you get and without it the two are divorced from each other and you see all these

people doing things and it creates no result I'm sure we've all felt that and so I wanted to dissect a common scenario where accountability delivers results okay you guys are all going to be familiar with this weight loss So there was actually a study done and it was over the Christmas period okay so it's over Christmas time and basically the study talked about how there were people who weighed themselves every day versus people who didn't weigh themselves at all okay they didn't change their diet didn't change exercise nothing the only instruction was either half the

group weighs yourself half the group doesn't this is what happened So those who weighed themselves every day lost an average of 1.9 pounds I'm sure you guys have seen this with your clients right it's like oh you lost weight because you started looking at the scale and realizing it was going the wrong direction right because just subconsciously they stopped doing some of the things they were doing because they hate the number they see versus the group that didn't weigh Themselves it tends to be that when we don't measure something it goes in the opposite direction

of what we want right and so those people actually gained 4.9 pounds that being said what does this mean to you guys you are the scale so when your clients step on the scale and it tells them where they are at versus where they want to be that is What you are to your team you are the scale for them there is no report there is no number there's no metric that's going to substitute you telling them how they're doing in their job and so it's there's low performance and there's ideal performance and you are

letting them know where they fall on that Spectrum what would they have to do to make it lower right like here's what you could do if You want to be worse at your job and then here's what you would have to do to be ideal to be a [ __ ] rock star and hit it out the park and you share that with them and people like when do I do on their what are ones that you have with them if you don't have one-on-one schedule one right so the question is if it's so simple

why is this such a problem in business guys there is a study done by McKinsey that talks about how Businesses two out of three strategies that are set out by a business fail that means that if you guys leave here and you're like I'm gonna do Tick Tock I'm gonna do YouTube I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do this new sales thing blah blah 66 will fail now some businesses can take that to 78 percent do you know what why and what the difference is Businesses that have a 78 success rate with strategy are the

ones who focus on the soft stuff which they Define as culture accountability talent management people management it's like when I talk about this where it's like why is this a problem that you have a hard time having hard conversations It's like because it [ __ ] matters your business will be left profitable it'll make less money and people will not like to work there So why is it that we don't do these things right usually it's literally just because we're uncomfortable right who here is uncomfortable having hard conversations don't lie most people who does it

anyways great like half we like to avoid things that were naturally uncomfortable at I get that because in the beginning the hardest thing for me to tell somebody that they Weren't doing all their job because I hated the look on someone's face when they were scared I didn't want them to feel fear you know I hated doing that to people right but what I realized is that the short-term fear that maybe someone feels when you have to tell them they're not doing the best job is better than the long-term dysfunction of having to fire somebody

because you didn't tell them because we have a lot of lies that Ruminate in our head that also prevent us from doing this right I shouldn't have to babysit them these people have done this job before they're an inexperienced adult they should know better you know I bought this person and they've got seven years of experience I should have to tell them what to do I should have to tell them how well they're doing they should know on their own right or like this is my favorite one we're a high performance culture They just don't

fit in it's [ __ ] lazy I don't have time to manage someone to this extent like I don't I don't have time for that later I just need to fire them I don't have time to manage my team tough and so what does anger do because listen I have been in all these scenarios and I've fought all these [ __ ] things and to this day I still think these things But I just act differently anger protects us from destroying our own self-image right so anytime you're angry at somebody on your team look inside

and ask yourself what am I afraid that this situation says about me as their boss anytime I hear someone complain about their team now it's like an automatic trigger in my head I'm like you [ __ ] hired them you're the reason they're here why are you complaining about a person who you have all of the realm of Like control of if they are on the team or not you have the control right but we're just not using our words we're not expressing it we're not holding them accountable and so the question is how do

you hold someone accountable and I really have thought about this a lot because I was like I hate when people are like you need to help people like I'm like what the [ __ ] does that mean right and we've Talked about what that looks like but really broken down I want you guys to screenshot this if you can because I really think it's the simplest version of what accountability is okay accountability is an expectation tied to a measurement and the only thing that can amplify it is feedback okay so let me break that down

really simply for you guys with a few examples expectations are in the form of their Job description the core values of the company and the expectations you set for them right so I'm setting the expectation with like this is the job description here's the values of the company right now I'm going to measure that with scorecards with kpis I tie to that person's role so if they're a sales person it's like closing sales how many sales and what's your close rate right And then the last piece that is the one that can either make this

better or worse is feedback when am I telling them how they're doing with the measurements that are tied to the expectations am I telling them in meetings am I telling them in one-on-one so I have end of week report so they have to fill it out to see it themselves do I have surveys where I'm asking them for feedback do I have feedback exercises do I recognize and reward them when they do well do I Give them quarterly reviews when I'm telling them how they're doing the more of those things you do the higher degree

you hold somebody accountable so the more communication you have with somebody on your team about how they are doing the more accountable they are held does that check out my favorite way to do this is that the more that you can have them fill something out where they have to see how Accountable they are like when they have to fill out a daily report or a weekly report what it talks about and it's showing here are the things you are measuring and they have to self assess the measurement you barely have to even hold someone

accountable because you are showing them themselves like they're like yes my I'm a two this week like obviously I'm sucking most people are so punishing to themselves all you have to do is create The opportunity in which they have to measure themselves first it's just like a client you know if they sign up with you and they weigh 180 pounds and it's like they have to fill out a thing and it's like the end of the week they weigh 181 how do they think that they're doing I understand scale measurement blah blah but like really

it's like obviously they're like oh it's not going the direction I want this kind of sucks and then you can just have a Conversation about what to do better you don't have to be like you suck rate yourself on a scale of one to ten on accountability so one is like you're like I am a [ __ ] I don't want anybody accountable I don't tell them what to do I don't tell them how well they're doing and I need to hear this today 10 is that everybody on your team is thriving because they all

know how well they're doing or how not well they're doing and They feel good about the fact that you're transparent with them awesome all right so we covered expectations we've covered accountability now we want to cover communication sounds so sexy communication what is communication though okay and I have defined this this is Layla's definition so I have no [ __ ] idea if this is the definition this is how I Define it okay good communication within A company talking about within a company right is a combination of trading your assumptions for curiosity and actively listening

to others on the team okay good communication is the bridge between ignorance and understanding okay so if somebody you tell them something and they still don't change their behavior you have not communicated well because everybody all also on your team Communicates differently think about it like this this is so powerful that in Sparta they did not have a word for freedom slavery was rampant and they didn't have a word for freedom that is how important communication actually is so why should you care really well I have literally never had anybody tell me that they have

quit a job Because the boss is over communicated not once it's always the opposite I've never heard a client be like gosh my coach really over communicates that's not good do you hear it okay yep and then the other side of that from like a personal matter I've never heard like a spouse leave a marriage because their spouse over communicated about how they were feeling So it's your job as a leader to set the tone for what communication really is okay why I like the little fat guy because the way that people perceive you from

your communication skills is directly correlated with how much people like and trust you okay really follow me on this how many of you have somebody on your team that they're like a great High performer but the way that they message people back in slacker Voxer is like super short kind of rude kind of harsh and the whole team just kind of doesn't really like them anybody anybody had that before okay that is just because they lack communication skills and it's just like I've had people on my team where they are brilliant they're bright in fact

I had somebody last year on my team who's like this amazing super bright super smart couldn't communicate for [ __ ] Now I understood because I would talk to her in person and I was like she's awesome but her written communication oh my God it was so bad and everyone hated her and I was like literally just bad at communication communication creates perception of what someone is really like and it's just on the opposite side we might have somebody who is incredibly smart incredibly talented some of you in this room are incredibly smart and Talented

but if you sit on the stage right now you might sound like [ __ ] you know what I mean like me a year ago I was like every time I got on stage right because it's just skill you have to learn and so generally speaking in order to Be an Effective leader you want to be liked and trusted I've heard the whole like I need to be respected I don't even liked I'm like that's stupid because if people like you they'll work more That was a light bulb moment for me and so the question

really is what are the actual behaviors that you can exhibit to be a good communicator right so I found this study it was literally I think five and a half or six years ago it was done by MIT and it was really cool because it was on communication and what they did was they had about 30 businesses and of those businesses they had everybody that was a teammate wear a Badge and what that badge did was it tracked the communication that those people had with others on the team and what they wanted to dissect is

what is the correlation between communication and success in a business and what are the behaviors that create good communication okay really interesting what they found is that there are four keys to success in communication there is energy engagement Emotional control and exploration I'm going to break these down for you guys because this really changed my mindset when it came to communication it made me understand what I was doing wrong at the time now the thing I will say is that this should make a lot of you feel really great because you have control over this

communication itself was a greater predictor of success than individual skill or individual intelligence or the Skill level of the team so when you see those teams that's like everyone's really [ __ ] smart but they're all like mean to each other it doesn't matter they're not gonna win if you are not as intelligent and maybe not as skilled you actually have a strategic Advantage if you have good communication so let's break down the four elements because I think you can all walk away and improve one of them so what I want you to listen to

with these four is Which one am I really lacking right now that I could walk away and be like I can I can do this I can influence this and it has the highest Roi if I do okay so energy is the number of exchanges that you have with your team both verbal and non-verbal okay so what does that look like right that could be like there's in work you have slack and you're slacking them and how many times are you slacking them there can be outside of work you're actually liking Their Instagram posts maybe

you're responding to their stories and they're doing that for each other it could be maybe you're tagging each other on Facebook posts it could be that you're doing Zoom calls phone calls so it's the number of exchanges that you're having this could also be high fives in person this could be you know little faces you make at each other when things are happening like how much communication in general both verbal and Non-verbal do you have with your team the second is engagement which is the distribution of energy amongst the team okay this is the one

that I was lacking which is okay if you have you know three people in a team it's what's the distribution between person a b and c I'm sure that we've all had a team meeting where there's like three people who talked the whole time and then three people who don't say [ __ ] yeah poor distribution of energy And so what we want is we want there to be even distribution of energy so the more evenly everybody talks on the team the better communication the entire team has that means getting some people to shut the

[ __ ] up and then it means getting some people to talk and then there's emotional control emotional control is just how well we can manage and control our emotions more precisely and our emotional reactions to Other people on the team okay so what does that mean that means that teams that stayed calm and neutral when receiving communication right and not having some big emotional reaction we're considered to have a higher emotional control it might not mean that they don't feel pissed off but they certainly don't project that and then lastly is exploration okay exploration

is the communication that Teammates engage in outside of their core team so if you have the sales team or like you know maybe one two people that sell and then you have a couple people that train how often do they interact with each other for some of you it's [ __ ] never and they don't even know what a sales call looks like and they don't even know what a class looks like and for some of you it's like they're all one The more congealed they are the more that they understand what each other do

and they talk to each other the better the communication so for a company like gym launch or some of the ones in our portfolio might be like they have a sales department Finance marketing Tech customer success HR it's like how can we get all those people to talk to each other one thing that I like to do is I like to assign people projects where I know that They're going to have to talk to other people on the team they wouldn't normally so it creates a better distribution and more exploration of energy awesome so what

does good communication look like this is it it is energy times engagement added to emotional control times exploration I really thought about the minus the like pluses and the Multipliers when I wrote this it's long that's what creates good communication on team it sounds simple but the thing is I know how hard it is in practice and that's why I want you guys to think which one of these four if I worked on would provide me with the highest Roi so rate yourself on a scale one to ten communication again one it's the bismal it

sucks it's awful 10 is like I don't Know why I'm sitting here anymore I'm gonna go to the bathroom cool now we've got Cadence it's everyone's favorite that was a joke company Cadence business Cadence team Cadence whatever you want to call it okay this is the fourth piece in the principles what is a meeting Cadence okay bear with me here is how often regularly scheduled Meetings happen in your business okay so if your business feels like like gross and like lots of things happening you don't really know what's going on kind of like that wound

up ball if what it should do is smooth it out and make it feel better it should just feel lighter you should understand what's happening you should have more transparency and so what I want you to do is think of it like it's a heartbeat for your team Okay without it it's really hard to know how healthy the team is if you don't have a predictable heartbeat and I know what you're probably thinking you're like Layla meetings I hate meetings and I want to talk about meetings blah blah blah okay I understand um predictable and

reliable reliable meeting cadences can really help eliminate uncertainty and promote security and creativity in your business I can tell you that I learned this myself because when we first started gym launch it was just Alex and I and then hired like two people and then I hired another few people and then all of a sudden we had like 11 people and I remember I had no meetings and just voxered people and I remember I had a mentor and she was like you really need to like get a couple meetings in place like it's not like

anyone but like let's have like one one meeting you know and I Was like oh [ __ ] that sounds awful like why why else would I have a business I don't want to do that um and I remember the first meeting that we ever did and my team after the our ops manager she like came to me and was like teared up and she was like thank you so much I feel so much better and I was like what the [ __ ] like I'm like you liked that she was like that was amazing

I was like that wasn't amazing you know I'm like I thought the people didn't Like these things and that was really hit me though I was like wow if done right people like these things now could you function without one maybe sure I'm sure people are like I'm techy knew this like no we don't talk blah blah I don't even like that I don't like like I don't know you guys like I like interaction with people that I like and I hire people I like so uh if done well I think a lot of people

do enjoy it now if you feel like you're constantly in a Reactive mode you're never able to get ahead you're frustrated that you and your team aren't on the same page you're in the dark about the real problems in your own business and you're confused as to what everyone does with their [ __ ] time um and you're anxious that things don't move fast enough then this is probably for you and I think it's worth listening now how can you know if meetings are good if you're not good at running them Yeah so that used

to be me which is like I remember one day I was sitting through some meetings it was like I think we had a couple of them on Monday and I was like this [ __ ] blows I hate this it's like every Sunday I'm like uh we have meetings all day tomorrow these are awful I hate them and maybe we should just cancel all of them right and then I realized I spend so much of my time in one-on-ones in meetings in Meetings with clients in meetings with teammates in meetings like literally just in meetings

in meetings with like people that I'm networking with like always in meetings and I was like if I hate meetings maybe I actually just suck at running them and I just don't know what goes into one and I realized that I spent 90 of my time doing that and I'd never read one [ __ ] Book on a meeting and I was like wow that's interesting It's something I do so much with so much of my time and yeah I actually have never studied it I just assumed it was something that was like so common

sense and so then I decided I was like I'm gonna read every book I can find on meetings so I can really understand because I also like hate when people like this is how you run a meeting I'm like listen there's no correct way it's just like if someone's like to lose weight eat 1500 calories it's like okay Blow me um sorry uh so what I've come to uh need to be on better behavior is that there are three elements of a successful meeting Cadence okay there's really purpose pulse and preparation I came up with

these myself I just want them to rhyme the three p's Okay the first one is pulse I want to explain to you the theory of this rather than like this is how many meetings you need if you're running a gym because I think this is much more applicable and you can use this forever pulse is the Cadence that determines if meetings are productive or pointless okay so if you feel like your meetings are pointless maybe you're having too many if you feel like they're productive you're probably having the right amount Okay how do you determine

the pulse activity times size so how much activity you have in your company like are we rolling something new out High activity are we starting a new marketing game high activity are we doing not Jack [ __ ] new at all low activity size of the company are you guys going to have the same amount of meetings as like via acquisition.com or like gym launch no please no that'd be awful that would make no sense at all because Bigger company there's more people more communication cadences so if you don't have enough usually it feels like

there's chaos a lot of disorganization there's no follow-through really weak culture low Innovation and like people are siled versus if you have too many meetings and the Cadence is too frequent it's low productivity long hours low speed low morale people like oh my God another meeting where I literally talk about Jack [ __ ] that I care about people just hate it but if you can get it right and hit the Sweet Spot It should feel like meetings increase productivity increase morale you can innovate faster you have more peer collaboration and a higher amount of

accountability so I think of it like this it's like they can be too far apart they can be too close or they can be just right that is pulse so remember activity times Size if you have a smaller team with less going on less meetings more stuff going on bigger team more meetings pretty simple does that make sense great the second is purpose okay what is the purpose the purpose of a meeting Cadence is the reason for why each meeting individually exists okay so what is the purpose is it strategic or is it tactical for

simplicity's sake I just want to focus On this okay tactical is it's a meeting focused on the doing it is small scale it is usually about the how how are we going to get this thing done how are we going to reach the subjective and it is short-term focused it's not focused on something that's two years out from now it might be like amazing so we just attended this event called jimcon and now we want to roll out this new marketing campaign and we signed up with this new company and now we want to roll

This out with our team how are we going to do that all right team we're going to get you guys together I'm going to present all the stuff to you I'm going to share the stuff that I learned from the event right tactical versus strategic strategic might be like I went to this event and I came away and I realized that we need to redo our whole [ __ ] gym Yeah some of you might feel that way yeah you're like Yep this doesn't work anymore I want to make some [ __ ] money so

we're going to change it might have like a two hour meeting we're gonna replan we're gonna redo our quarterly objectives redo our long-term Vision redo our you know whatever one year objectives it's the why and it's long-term focused that is the difference between meetings and so you want to know what the purpose Is some people you know oftentimes tactical meetings could be a slack a Voxer a phone call but when it's a lot of people sometimes it is better and easier to do it in a meeting strategic often is something that you want to plan

a little bit more for ahead of time so you have more conducive conversation in the meeting itself and it doesn't go on forever that is purpose now the last piece that really makes These two things effective is preparation okay so what is preparation for meeting preparation is the process of making a meeting useful without this this is why most people's meetings suck honestly so what is preparation I was really trying to think about this and it is having the right information the right people and the right agenda those three things without any one of those

three a meeting can feel awful Okay information which is what information should the attendees have ahead of time in order to achieve the purpose of the meeting so if you want to have a meeting with your team to share some stuff you learned it would probably make sense to share your notes first most people even myself I don't process [ __ ] on a meeting someone tells me something I'm eating it's like 10 minutes on my off I don't know what I Said like nothing's happening like just no right so that is how you inform

people ahead of time the second is what people should attend in order to achieve the purpose of the meeting there are two kinds of people that should be on a meeting or I think it's ideal to have on a meeting right one is a contributor those are people that have information that would be useful to let The decision makers know of so they can make the right decision right so say that you're having a problem with client churn in a program that you're running it probably makes sense to have the trainers that are training the

clients come into a meeting and then inform the decision makers which might just be you and maybe an ops manager of the problem right so you have decision makers and You have the people that host the information those are the two people you want on the meeting now do you have to have everybody from both sides no but you need to have enough to make it effective and then lastly it's just a simple agenda which is like what needs to be discussed or shared to achieve the purpose of the meeting right like let's put together

a little like just like you wouldn't tell your Trainer to go run a class without any workouts it's like they're just like I'm afraid I'm a free ball oh God that's not a word I'm in a free not free ball I did this once free free solid yeah I'm gonna freestyle it I did that literally one time I was like [ __ ] I didn't I didn't know what that meant I didn't know what it meant uh yeah I'm a freestyle this workout right and then you're like what the [ __ ] is This like

the kettlebells are everywhere like they're like they don't know what they're doing like very disorganized same for a meeting you don't want to go into a meeting without an agenda because it's gonna be the same as that's going to feel chaotic it's going to feel disorganized and it's going to feel like I didn't it was kind of a waste of time it's gonna take longer than it needs to those are the three things you need to make a meeting Cadence now I want you Guys to rate yourself on a scale of one to ten and

let me tell you some of you might be thinking well Leila I only host really one meeting a week well then make it [ __ ] good it should make a good impression and you should be able to do this better than somebody who has like 10 a week one you suck and your meetings really suck and you hate them as well which we all have been there 10 is they're amazing and you love your meetings Awesome the last piece in terms of the five principles of management is recognition and guys this is my favorite

piece because our team knows that acquisition.com me and Alex talk about this all the time and I think it's something that I have gotten substantially better at as I have grown as a leader what is recognition recognition is the Acknowledgment of a person or team's Behavior effort or business result that supports the organization's goals and values that is what it is in terms of a business I'm not saying in general right there are two things that people want more than sex and money and that is recognition and praise and that is one of my favorite

quotes by Mary Kay Ash I think It rings true so tell me this what wife is most likely to cook for her husband the wife who when she makes the food her husband tries it and he's like babe [ __ ] great like amazing meatloaf or whatever the [ __ ] it is you make right or the wife who she like gives her husband the food and he like takes a bite he just like keeps eating she's like What the [ __ ] do you think right has anyone ever done that they've like cooked for

their spouse and they're like start eating you're like you know what I mean I've Alex he knows I'll be like tell me what do you think he's like could have been better I liked last night's more I'm like [ __ ] this is why we eat out um kidding right the wife who gets the recognition from her husband that [ __ ] Is probably going to get addicted to cooking if every night he's like damn amazing so good you're amazing you're like Martha Stewart Chef white like she's like oh my God she wants more of

that so she cooks more she makes more and she does better on the other side what husband is more likely to take out the trash the husband who when he takes out the trash he's like about time He's like wow [ __ ] or the husband who when he takes the trash he's like thank you so much I really appreciate that you did that for me and he's like oh I want to make my wife like me more what does that lead to you know Jesus stop [Applause] yeah take out the trash boys um right

recognition Reinforces Behavior if you want someone to do more of something recognize them for it and be careful of what you recognize people for because you will get more of it whether you like it or not okay recognition can be your biggest competitive Advantage especially in the industry that you guys are in gosh there are so many people that don't do this here okay what does this do for your business Like actually tactically one it reduces employee turnover by 18 percent the gyms I have seen retain the most employees [ __ ] recognize them all

the time they're nice to people right they tell them they do a good job it can increase uh positive Culture by 66 percent it can increase profitability by 23 percent increase engagement by 14 and increase Your ability to recruit Talent by 56 percent I'm not kidding like people ask me all the time like how do I get better Talent I'm like people probably don't really like working there it all stems from that so why does this matter to you right if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go together

you guys need a team to do what you want to do you can't I mean [ __ ] some of you do you run a gym By yourself or you run a business by yourself that [ __ ] sucks does that suck I hate that [ __ ] I would not want to do this alone I love having a team if you don't and you don't put this in place often what you're going to experience is more demands for higher pay more time off requests and people that like randomly leave all the time more employee

turnover lower customer retention because what you do internally seeps outwardly Lower customer conversion and lower profitability these are all the things that happen if we don't do this so what is recognition and how can you deploy it in your business right A lot of people think like oh my God maybe I'm too small for this I only have like five people I started doing this we had like five employees so people like how did you grow so fast did you I'm like it's literally it's literally all the soft [ __ ] that nobody wants to

do I swear to God so what is it it's really a business initiative to formally acknowledge a person or behavior that we want to see more of in the company when we want more of something recognize it okay there are four pieces to recognition there's really the what the who the how and the when so I Want to Break these down the when When are you going to recognize somebody okay these are things that I want you guys to think through so you can identify opportunities that you're currently missing where you're not reinforcing Behavior one

would be when someone completes a goal right maybe they achieve a quarterly goal they achieve all their quarterly goals for the quarter they hit a sales quota uh they finish the workouts ahead of time a client hits a goal you can this all Applies to clients as well the second is effort based so a recognition of an employee whose behavior is most likely to drive results this is important because if somebody's trying to achieve a goal that might take them a year you need to give them reinforcement throughout the way otherwise the likelihood that they

will actually achieve it is very low that is why most people don't hit long-term goals they don't get enough Micro recognition along the way right and so what happens if you don't recognize behavior is you [ __ ] extinguish a behavior it's called an Extinction curve the less a behavior is recognized and reinforced the more likely it is the person doesn't do it again so if you have an employee who's working their ass off to achieve a goal it's going to take months [ __ ] recognize them every day it'll keep them going The third

is Milestone based okay so this one is probably one of the easiest ones it's like your first day on the job uh 90 days with the company you're off like your probationary period it could be a yearly anniversary a birthday an Employee Appreciation I'm always trying to find like a reason to like reward stuff recently at Google there was like Administrative Professionals Day and then I was like I'm gonna recognize like my two [ __ ] awesome EAS who made all This [ __ ] happen for us right so I'm like I just want a

reason yeah heard that Caleb and then lastly is value right which is recognition of behavior that exemplifies a core value in the company so people like how do I I have these values but like nobody abides by them it's like well do you [ __ ] reinforce them for it it's like every time I see someone use sincere Candor I'm like [ __ ] awesome you rock you are amazing every Time I see somebody that is acting competitively great in our company again amazing tell everyone on the team you are amazing this is awesome we

are reinforcing you right now guess what it works if they know you're doing it my whole team knows that we do it it still works the second is the who so a lot of people are like okay I now need to do this to everyone in my company But that's not actually the case in fact yes it is effective when you recognize someone's Behavior but there's also then can you recognize their behavior in front of the entire team which is even more powerful because social recognition is more powerful than individual and you know what's even

more powerful than that in most companies is that peer-to-peer recognition can you get people that are teammates to recognize each other So it's not just you going top down but you can get people side to side to recognize each other give each other high fives reinforcing someone's hitting a goal how much of that do you have in your business and then there's the what okay there's formal recognition and there is spontaneous recognition formal recognition is easy it's the predetermined and predictable way to Acknowledge behavior and accomplishments in a company this is where you see people

recognizing people for birthdays anniversaries all that kind of stuff right and that is the stuff that I was really good at when we first started and I think it created a really great culture uh for the most part besides all the [ __ ] ups and that's what a lot of people can do they can do it this way that might be yearly you've got MVP of the year it Might be quarterly you have quarterly reviews attainment of a goal we do a thing at gym launch called the Jedi award it might be monthly Employee

of the Month entertainment of a monetary goal you know they hit their sales quota or might be weekly they have like a birthday an anniversary somebody did something really cool client win right those are all the ones that you guys are probably pretty familiar with but what is spontaneous recognition Spontaneous recognition is a flexible and timely method to positively acknowledge behavior and accomplishments what does this look like okay it looks like shout outs the moment somebody does something on your team shout them out in the slack Channel or Voxer Channel or whatever it is they

use to communicate immediately text them right shout them out to the whole team on the full team little chat it could be a handwritten card somebody Does something great send them a handwritten card on literally there's Apple handwritten.com it can send it same day it could be a wow gift it could be like someone did something [ __ ] awesome I'm gonna send them flowers right now I'm gonna send them cookies I'm gonna send them an energy drink I'm gonna send them coffee I'm gonna send them a bottle booze like whatever it is whatever they

like It could be you send them a t-shirt at gym launch for a long time I hope we still have it um we had this program where anytime someone exemplified a core value we would go online and we could send them a t-shirt that said the core value on it really cool it could be highlighting them in you know an email you send out to your team every week or a shout out or a little synopsis you do The important part to understand is that recency beats intensity when you are recognizing someone a high five

is more powerful than telling them they did a good job 10 minutes later so when your trainer teaches a class and they [ __ ] crush it just give them a high five immediately this is more powerful than any so if you are to recognize somebody and it's going to be you know I want to give them a huge bonus at the end of the year and You're probably thinking like I'm sure lots of you are like I need to like incentivize my team correctly this drives Behavior more than any compensation plan why because compensation

is so [ __ ] delayed that our brains can't even associate what Behavior has driven it now I will say the more intelligent the human the more they can associate the more delayed gratification that is true but it still is going to be beat by recency every Time and then there's the how you know how are we doing those things just a couple of examples of how you can actually recognize your team tactically there's written verbal and reward-based um recognition Okay written company newsletter you could shout them out on social media like trainer of the

week you know don't say sales person of the week um something else of the week right you Send them a handwritten card verbally shouting them out on a meeting telling them in their one-on-ones acknowledging it to somebody else on the team and then there's reward you could plan an activity for them something I like to do with people I'm closer to on the team is like you know I'll even ping their spouse get them to like coordinate a day off and then like help them go to spa or something right you give them a bonus

You can send them custom swag a trophy an award something for free right and so the ideal scene is that you start small and you add in variety and for all of you guys I want you to understand too this can all be done for your clients and if I were you I would test this on my team especially on my trainers and then get them to start doing this to your clients I bet you they'll lose more weight they'll get in better shape They'll come to more classes I call this the recognition Scrambler which

is really just an example of how this all fits together right am I going to do formal or am I going to do spontaneous who is going to do it to who and then how am I going to deliver the recognition is it going to be written verbal or reward based and is it going to be due to an outcome effort Milestone or value I would use this and I would just even Right now for you guys focus on one piece of it it's like what can I do better what's one thing I can start

reinforcing in my team today with like a [ __ ] high five or a slack message so I'd love you guys to rate yourself on a scale one to ten recognition one is that you're like man I think my team does a good job but I don't tell them I don't actually reinforce it 10 is like every time my team does a Good job I try to spot it and I try to tell them great that was all five okay so what did we cover how to set clear expectations how to hold people accountable how

to communicate effectively how to not set a totally boring communication Cadence and how to deploy recognition What I would love for you guys to do is pick one of these things whatever you felt like after listening to resonated with you as being the one that you need them more of in your business and that be the one takeaway you have from this talk if you try to do all this is way too much [ __ ] [ __ ] takes way too long but if you can do one thing when you walk away I think

that's a gift we can all give ourselves thank you guys for your time