Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello, welcome back to another episode of Train for a Great Life. I'm going to pass along a conversation I had with a gym owner this morning that I mentor personally, and it's about process and outcome, or process and results. We're going to start off with the idea that we tend to notice the aha moment. I think the era of social media has really amplified this. You know, we see the above part of the iceberg and we don't see everything below, which is much bigger. The overnight success took 10 years. You know, it's all so cliche, but it's all so true. The example that I used in terms of I'm helping him build his business I've been interviewed on a couple of podcasts recently about successful gym ownership and just success in different ways and I don't necessarily have these crazy stories of like this was the key that unlocked the door and then from there, everything changed. What I do have, when I sort of look back down the mountain, so to speak, is very consistent footsteps and showing up and not getting distracted and not chasing the shiny things and not chasing the things that I don't necessarily actually value. So, in terms of building the gym, one thing I think you just have to care deeply about what you do and about people, but you know, caring that your staff is taken care of and feeling valued. That's something that you always have to kind of keep coming back to, making sure that your vision and mission and values are clear and that people are operating and understand that as well. What does it look like to live within these and what does it look like to not? It's making sure that you run your process for meeting with new potential clients and not get lazy, because we know that our process has a long tail effect of getting the right people in the right door. That cannot be understated teaching someone and bringing someone into what you do for the very first time, because it is the very first time for them, even though it might be the 550th time for you. It's keeping your head on a swivel for stories and people's successes under the umbrella of what you do, and then being able to share these stories while sitting behind a computer and kind of working through how to tell that story and get it out to people and make sure that they know what you do. When you do these things over and over and over, you're going to have little iterations, of course, and try to improve on them by 1% to 2% each time. You know, over time it just looks like very continuous progress, which is great. It's exactly what we want in terms of building a business, because it feels more sustainable. It's it's what we want to see in a gym client too, because it's more sustainable.

Speaker 1: 2:54

You don't need to try to do it all at once. The contrast that I used was me playing the guitar, which I have not really gotten better at in 20 years. I go through phases of high motivation where it's something that I want to do and I might pick it up every day for two weeks, and then I might work on a couple of specific things and but usually what I do is I default to just trying to play something that I know to the best of my ability and not really learning intricacies of how to do it better at a higher level. So this kind of basic version hasn't really gotten much better. And then I get frustrated and I put it away and I don't do it for maybe a couple of weeks at a time, and then the whole thing repeats which I don't. I don't know, I don't hate it, but I don't. I don't get better. I don't know, I don't hate it, but I don't. I don't get better.

Speaker 1: 3:48

It sounds a lot like living in the day to day of your business and not doing the tasks that move you forward. It also sounds a lot like relying on motivation to show up to the gym or only showing up when you feel like it, versus the discipline to stick to a schedule and a routine. It's funny I use the example in the gym about just showing up and you know brick by brick and learning to not do it all in one day. I use the example of if you sit a kid in front of a piano and you give them a lesson, even for 10 minutes every day over 10 years, they're going to end up being pretty incredible because they are consistently doing the thing and they're learning about how to do it better. I have that in some areas of my life and then, interestingly enough, when it comes to a musical instrument, I have the exact opposite and at least a frustration and this like continuous pick it up and put it down.

Speaker 1: 4:36

Anyway, that's enough. I'm sure that you get the idea. This is about progress. I'm not looking or feeling sexy, but reflecting on where you were one year, two years, five years and ten years ago. Our brains are not good at recognizing that, and so I implore you to do that. And you know, ask yourself the questions of how you. You know, when you PR by five pounds and you were hoping for 20 pounds, think about where that lift was a year ago. Or five pounds and you were hoping for 20 pounds, think about where that lift was a year ago or five years ago, you know, maybe before you started doing all this stuff. Anyway, keep laying the bricks. It's working. I promise I'll see you in the gym.