Run a Profitable Gym
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Run a Profitable Gym
Coach Ascension: How Top Gym Owners Create Careers for Staff
A link is missing between credentials and careers in the fitness industry—and it’s costing gym owners a lot of great people.
Common story: A trainer starts making $20 per class and works up to coaching 40 sessions a week. But the trainer isn’t making enough money and can’t see a way to make more without burning out. So the coach leaves the fitness industry to “get a real job.” The gym owner shrugs and tosses another coach into the cycle.
Sound familiar? If so, this episode of "Run a Profitable Gym" is for you.
Host Mike Warkentin and gym-owning mentor Karl Solberg discuss the detailed coach ascension program used at CrossFit Medis and CrossFit Sickla in Sweden.
The model allows trainers to level up as they develop and add the skills that bring more value. Clients get better results and pay more, the gym earns more, and the coach earns more and creates a career. Everyone wins.
The first step: Create an evaluation for your coaches and then review their performance regularly to ensure they’re improving.
To go further, review Karl’s system and consider building something similar to create careers for coaches at your gym.
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1:43 - Ascension plans increase value
3:35 - Levels increase value
6:48 - The coach ascension plan
10:48 - A detailed look at the plan
32:53 - Creating and implementing
Here's a short story. A person gets a coaching credential. The coach starts coaching and making $20 an hour. The coach keeps coaching and eventually coaches 40 classes a week at $20 an hour, coach isn't making enough money, and the coach eventually works more and burns out, and then the coach applies to be a firefighter. The gym owner puts the person through the exact same process and gets the exact same result. If that sounds familiar, this is the show for you. This is Run a Profitable Gym. My name is Mike Warton . Please hit subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. There is a missing link between credentials and careers in the fitness industry, and it's costing gym owners lots of great people. What's the solution? It's a coach ascension model that allows trainers to develop and add the skills that bring more value clients get better results and pay more. The gym earns more. The coach earns more and creates a career. Everyone wins. So what does an a plus coach Ascension model look like? Carl Solberg is going to show us exactly what it looks like today. Carl , welcome from Sweden. How are you?
Speaker 2:Thank you. I'm, I'm really, I'm really well. Hope you're good too.
Speaker 1:I am. Excellent. Uh, tell listeners which gyms you own, what are you up to over there?
Speaker 2:So, I opened up CrossFit Mees with my business partner Oscar Yohi , in , uh, uh, 2014. So we celebrated 10 years , uh, this , uh, summer, congrats. And then we opened up , uh, CrossFit sla , our second location in 2020. And , uh, that's where we are now. Uh, we are looking for new venues to open up new gyms in the future as well .
Speaker 1:Oscar has been a regular on this show because he's very passionate about coaching, and I love to talk to you as well about this, because this is something that you guys have invested a ton of time in. So I'll get right into it. The big picture, let's go over that first before we dig into the details of your model. How does an ascension plan bring increasing value to the client? You know, so the gym earns more, or the coach earns more and creates a career. How does this work?
Speaker 2:Yes, you , you said it in the intro as well, the , the , trying to find those win situations. So like everything we do, we try to create a win for our clients, a win for our staff, and of course, a win for the business, for the longevity of the business. And , uh, we think that if the coach increases their or gets better , uh, increase their coaching skills, and also all of the time, if they're moving forward in their career, that will benefit the client. And if it benefits the client, she will stay longer and maybe spend more money, which benefits the business. So there we have the win win-win situation.
Speaker 1:Here's the mistake that I made. I just assumed the coaches want would wanna coach for $20 an hour for the rest of their lives. That doesn't equal, at least in North America, it doesn't equal a good career in a good wage that you can raise a family on. And so people would just leave, or I had part-time coaches, which they weren't bad coaches. Them of them were excellent, but they weren't full-time coaches because they couldn't make a career of it, and they had other careers. What we're looking for in the fitness industry is a way to take a credential, which is just a starting point, and then make a career out of it. And it's not the same thing because if I just get, say, a CrossFit level one or any of the other certifications or credentials that are out there, that's just a starting point that says, I have a bare minimum level of competency. It doesn't tell me how to create a career, right? It doesn't say, here's how you generate more revenue, here's how you get better results faster. Here's how you grow the pie at the gym. So the owner earns more and you get paid more. Here's how you start new programs, specialty programs, all these other things. But you figured this out through a coach ascension model, and I'm very excited to dig into this thing. So, quick detail. Your model coaches earn more when they reach like the black level or a CrossFit level three, I think, if I've got that right. So why do they, why does that warrant a raise? Like do they create more value at that point, or how does that work?
Speaker 2:I do believe they create , uh, a lot more value. If, if , uh, the coach improves his or her skills, they , they will bring more value to the client. We decided to have the, the, the , the , the pay increase connected to something external so that in our case it happens to be the , the CrossFit level three. So the first thing we did , and by the way, I just have to say I did all of those things that you mentioned first, like in the early years, we also thought that, you know, a coach would, they, they would coach forever for, for $20. And we don't need to train them then train themselves. If, if they're, if they have a growth growth mindset, then they will just do it themselves. I don't
Speaker 1:Feel so bad then if you made the same mistake. Yeah ,
Speaker 2:I , I absolutely made the same mistakes. But then like a , a first very rudimentary thing that you can do is to tell your staff what you expect from them in terms of getting better at their craft. And , uh, with CrossFit, it's very simple because you , you have these levels, you have level one, and for us, that's the entry level. You need to have level one before you start coaching. But then we tell our , uh, we have a , um, an education plan that says that after a certain amount of hours coached, we expect them to go and take the level two. And then after another amount of hours coached, we expect them to go and take the level three. And once they get to level three, which is usually a two year process, then , uh, uh, we also say that not only are we going to pay for the whole, the whole certification, we are also gonna give you a raise. So that's the way we've created this big carrot for them to, to go after.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the interesting thing here is that if you have a basic level credential, you probably know how to teach physical movement. You might know the basics of running a class and the little things, those starting points, as you get better, you're gonna develop your soft skills, like your people skills, how to motivate people, how to retain clients, how to get them to the gym, how do they , how to adjust descriptions so that they're better each, you know, each quarter, how to move people along faster. How to tell them , ah , don't do that, but do this for the triathlon. You're training for. You start to develop those skills and all of a sudden you become more valuable because you're getting better results for clients faster, which equals a better rate. And so, I know I interviewed a trainer on this show where his , some of the trainers in his gym were made were, I think that the rates were like $70 an hour or $75 an hour. But he, as the head trainer, head coach, was charging, I think well over a hundred because he was that good, and his clients saw the value and paid for it. And that comes as a real result. He had a , an incredible commitment to professional development. He had a kind of certifications, credentials and experience. And again, credentials don't necessarily always make you a great coach, but development does. And if you're a great coach and clients get better results, they're going to be going to pay for it if you charge 'em the appropriate rate, and then that creates more value for the gym, and the gym owner can then give more to the trainer and we create careers. So that's the basics of what we're looking at here, guys. And Carl , you have an incredible coach ascension plan. So what is its purpose in your business? You covered a little bit of it , of it, but let's just lay it out in graphic detail. Why is, does this thing exist? Because you didn't put 10 minutes of work into it. You put a lot of work into it.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, the , and the , the , the biggest reason for it is the promise we, we make to our clients and our promise to our clients is to fundamentally increase their health and quality of life. So that's the main driver of everything we do. When we started developing this , uh, like I said, it was, it was rudimentary things. We just said that, okay, we expect you to get better, and this is the way it looks. Just putting a time to, it made it more simple for, for our team to see, okay, okay, I understand now at what rate I'm, I , I need to do things. But those were only the external credentials. I believe we need . You need to do more if you really want to see your, your staff moving in the right direction all of the time, these external validations are not enough. So you also need to have a , a plan for how you develop skills over time. And I think an easy way to, to wrap your head around this is to, to compare it to athletes. Because I think most of the, the , the , the , the people who are listening to this, they, they know how to coach athletes, and we know what the best athletes in the world are capable of. We also know that a beginner athlete, they're nowhere near that. But we know that if we put good progressions in over time, we can develop skills. The same thing has to go for coaching. So , uh, I think, or the, the mistake I made in the beginning was that I wrote this, this , um, golden standard of coaching a class. So , uh, and, and I, I wrote everything down and I explained it to the team, like, this is the way a perfect class looks like. And when I started evaluating the team, according to this golden standard, they all failed. And they all felt really bad because they weren't prepared for it yet. And that, I think was , was the , the , the start of like, thinking more about, well, how can I do this in a way that motivates people? And we do it for athletes, right? We don't tell an athlete to do the hardest thing right away. We tell the athlete to do something that they can be successful with, and then they get motivated when they succeed, and then you tell them the next thing, and then they get motivated and they will succeed and so on. So I had to scale back this, this perfect class coaching a perfect class and making it easier. So I guess that's the, the , the beginning of a , a tiered system.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Listeners, Carl said something profound that I want to just highlight for you in case you missed it. I've seen many, many coach evaluation forms in gyms. I have rarely seen variations of the same form in the same gym. Meaning every gym has this thing where we're rating people outta 10 on a scale , you know , scale one to 10 on a number of different things. Now that applies to your five-year coaches and your one-year coaches, or your one day coaches, the people who just got their credential. How does that really work? If you really think about it, that's really not fair because you've got, like Carl said, this gold standard, and you're asking someone who just got a credential to hit the gold standard, can they? Probably not, right? So this evaluation, this stepwise evaluation where it's like this stuff, then this stuff and this stuff, then this stuff and this stuff, and this stuff really sets your coaches up for success. Because I wouldn't wanna come out and say, Carl , I just got my , uh, level one , uh, and I doing a coach evaluation, I got a zero, and I feel miserable about it. That's not fair to me. And Carl doesn't want that to be the evaluation process. So listeners, if you have that and you're applying a like your gold standard to a brand new coach, think about what that might do to their development. Okay ? We're gonna show you exactly what Carl does here in just a second. So, Carl , let's walk through your ascension plan as it relates to full-time coaches. And we're talking here, this is a goal about developing career coaches, people who get great results for clients, generate revenue, support gyms, and make good living. So I'm gonna do some screen sharing while you do this. Uh, please walk us through this and let's , uh, let's show people what you had developed to help this make this work.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. The , the one thing I wanna say two is that the , there , there's, there are two tracks you have to keep in mind. It's, it's coaching skills, and that's usually what you, you , uh, uh, evaluate with a form. Like you, you sit down and you observe a class and you observe what the coach is doing in terms of preparation. You observe what the coach is doing in terms of a whiteboard brief, for instance, you observe what they do in the general warmup, the specific warmup. Maybe there's a workout prep, maybe there's a workout, maybe there's a cool down . And you have all of these credentials for all of these different pieces. For a full-time coach, you probably have a lot more things as well. They will not fit into this template, but they need also to be developed over time. So apart from the evaluation template, we also have a coach journey, or a coach roadmap where we hit specific milestones , uh, in specific time domains. So we have, for instance, a plan for week one to four. Then we have other milestones and other action steps that , uh, will happen between week five and 12. And then there are other milestones and action steps that happens after week 12, up until week 26 and so on.
Speaker 1:Sounds like a professional business to me. It doesn't sound like, here's your credential, here's your coaching schedule, here's $20 per class. It sounds very professional to me. I'm gonna open this thing up, run us through it. This thing is incredible.
Speaker 2:All right , so what we're looking at at right now is , uh, the orange level coach. For us, the orange level is the minimum required level for , uh, for coaching , uh, for coaching classes or personal training clients for that matter. So in this case, the evaluation form applies to a group class. And , uh, there are a couple of different pieces to it. Uh, like I just mentioned, there's a preparation piece , uh, whiteboard brief , uh, general warmup, specific warmup, workout prep, and then comes the workout or the metcon, or if there's a Metcon or if it's work sets, if it's strength or, or something like that. And then there's a , a , a cool down . So that's what we see in this, this evaluation template. Now for , uh, an orange level coach, I expect less than of a blue, a purple or a brown level coach. So I don't expect preparations to be as profound as for the higher levels, but I do expect them to have some sort of an idea of the time management, the scaling options, the equipment layout, but I also expect them to greet members by name. This is all part of preparation before , before the, the class starts. And I, of course, expect them to start on time. Then as we move on to the whiteboard brief, I, I expect the, the orange level coach to be ex to be able to explain the session in general terms. So show or, or, or , uh, uh, make the, the participants understand the general movement patterns involved. Also , uh, talk a little bit about how the duration of the workout and the, the rep scheme or something like that, but not, not more than that. They should do it in less than three minutes, and they should also make sure they ask about injuries. But that's it. Uh, and if we move on through the template in the general warmup, I expect them to smile and be happy. I expect them to teach and demo the movements and the movement options, and I expect them to communicate whatever the athlete needs. Apart from that, I only expect them to, to call the athletes by name , uh, in this specific warmup. I, I expect them to go through , uh, the movements and provide some sort of a focus point so the athlete knows what to focus on. If we're doing deadlifts, for instance, a focus point , point could be , uh, keep your chest off or something like that. But the athlete should be taught something. And then of course, the, the , the coach should provide some sort of a feedback. So if I've told people to keep their chest up, I should look for that and I should provide feedback on, on that. I don't expect much more for the specific warmup. Then in terms of a workout prep, you know, if they manage to get a prep round in to make sure that the athlete feel , understand what's gonna happen in a , in a minute or so, then that's great. And also give them time, enough time to have a bathroom break. Once the workout starts, I expect them to be very clear about the starting and the stopping. And I , uh, also make them to, to , uh, make sure that nobody runs into each other. So keep things safe during the workout. Again, I want them to repeat names for us. That's really important. And again, I expect them to give feedback at this level. It could be just good effort or , uh, good job. Those are not great feedback, but it's better than nothing. Once the workout is done and they've told everybody , uh, they made sure that everybody is, is back in place, I expect them to go through the, the cool down . And the cool down is quite simple. I expect the same type of cool down from, from an orange level coach that I expect from a , a black level coach, basically. Uh , and that is that everybody's back in place and recognized for finishing. I want all of the athletes to give each other recognition by giving each other high fives, and then , uh, share some progress, like share a bright spot. Uh, then there's cleanup instructions and instructions for logging the result. And then I expect the coach to say goodbye with a warm , uh, and in a warm way so that the athletes feel that they're welcome back. That's it, that's what I expect from , uh, uh, an orange level coach with which for us is the , uh, the minimum required standard for coaching.
Speaker 1:So what I see on here, Carl , there's a lot of stuff, but it all kind of boils down to generally run a pretty good class in general. You're not asking them to do like elite level stuff, like diagnose and triage, three different faults. You're asking them to get like one point of performance, hammer it throughout the workout, start on time, be happy, say names, congratulate people. So we've got the basic stuff here where if I took an entry level credential and I came out and this was my checklist for my very first class, I could have a reasonable chance at scoring a five or better on this with some room for improvement just by looking at this and then trying to hit the marks. I've gotta say names, I've gotta pick one point of performance and hit it regularly. Yes, I need to start on time. I need to do this. This is not overwhelming. It doesn't look intimidating. It looks like just basic stuff, but it also looks like the, the essential elements of a good fitness class. I love it As a starting point for evaluation, let's talk about what happens next. What do you add in and what do you expect next?
Speaker 2:Well, if we , uh, jump and look at blue, there are a couple of more things that I've, that I've , uh, added to the template here. Uh, preparation is roughly the same thing when it comes to the whiteboard brief. I expect a little bit , uh, of a deeper , uh, explanation of what's gonna happen. So what, what I've added here is, is , uh, intended stimulus, talking a little bit about what , uh, uh, why we're doing what we're doing today. So if it is , uh, the main benefit of this workout is improved cardiovascular endurance, or if this workout is , uh, mainly aimed at getting stronger, that's something I expect the blue level coach to say, to include in the whiteboard brief.
Speaker 1:So everything in orange is included in blue plus some additional stuff, is that correct? Correct. Correct . Okay . So I'm gonna click back here. So if we look at , uh, orange, explain the session, what and how we've got blue. You've got what, why, and how. Okay. Correct . So this is an additional thing, and like the why is an additional level of coaching, understanding and skill. Oh , I love this. Run us through some more of this. This is great.
Speaker 2:So if we move on to the general warmup, there is , uh, not just communicating what the athlete needs, but it's also better group management. I expect the blue level coach to control the room better. So those things goes like managing the group and equipment and then directing the athletes to the right place in the room. Those are things I've added now for the blue level . Coach. Coach , uh, also added some, some like presence and attitude piece there. The group was laughing together. Yeah , I wanna make sure that everybody has a good time.
Speaker 1:So as you start to become a better coach, your personality starts to come out. You're still doing all the technical stuff, but you're starting to so show some of those soft skills that make the group a lot of fun and make the interaction better. Correct.
Speaker 2:And when I move on to this specific warmup, I have , uh, I demand more in terms of using cues for static movements and also using cues for dynamic movements. And also be , have a variety of cues there in, in the specific warmup.
Speaker 1:So not just hammering on one thing, we are , we're starting to look for a few extra things, see a bit more, see full movements, specifically specifics, essentially.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Absolutely. That's what it is. And then also what's added here is balance attention across the group. So I don't expect , uh, an orange level coach to spend the equal amount of time with each athlete in the room. They tend to stick with , uh, uh, beginners a little bit more because it's easier to see those fold . And that's fine for the orange level coach, but as soon as, as we start evaluating them according to the blue template, they, I wanna see they spend , uh, divide the time between the athletes in a better way. Uh, what else do we have? Uh , that I've added to this, this part , uh, during the workout prep, there's, there's more , uh, there's more to it in the workout prep, basically, for an orange level coach, I'm, I'm fine with just the prep round and the bathroom break break, but here , uh, there is , uh, suggest scaling options for, for each athlete , uh, have them test the movements, weights and scaling options for the workout so they know if they're more or less , uh, picking the right weights. Also, a , a , a thing here that I have added is, is to remind the athletes about the why. It , it's good because most people, they tend to forget that they, they don't remember what was being said in the whiteboard brief. Now they need a reminder. Oh, it was , uh, uh, uh, uh, heavy breathing. That was the po the , the , the , the sensation I, I , uh, I should feel today.
Speaker 1:And this is also like if we really take our, you know, go big picture. This is actually a retention strategy and, and a , and a client success strategy where if I'm a good coach and I've been around for a while and I started to know my members, I can say, dude, we're doing this deadlift workout and we're gonna lift heavy tee . The goal is to max out at a five rep max deadlift. This is really gonna help you with your goals of that power lifting competition you've got coming up in three months. This is like essential for this absolutely this or the training. And like now all of a sudden the client is saying, this is the general why at the whiteboard, this is the why for me, this is why I'm showing up, because it helps me accomplish my goals. It's not just to get stronger necessarily. It's this client specific goal, which your coaches will start to realize and understand if they're a part of this, this ascension plan, and if they're, you're doing goal review sessions and all these things that allow coaches to get to know their clients and prescribe the best stuff for them to get swift results. So the why is hugely important, but you can't always ask a day one coach to say that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And it's, it's the motivation thing, right? So athletes are motivated when they come. They've come to class, they've taken time out of their day, and they've, you know, they have their workout clothes on and everything. Of course, they're motivated. But if the coach can help them with that internal motivation just a little bit by connecting what we do to their goal, then that's even better. Then they're gonna push it a little bit harder, then they're gonna get a little bit be better results over time. And even if, even if it's just like 1% better than it would've been without that reminder, you know, over time that 1% it accumulates. It's
Speaker 1:A lot. So I'm gonna click into purple here if that works for you. And , uh, do it. What we're gonna see is everything that was in orange and blue is now in purple. Carl , highlight for me the set , the stuff that you've, the key stuff you've added here in purple, and I'm gonna ask you before you do, how long does it take someone on average to get from orange to blue?
Speaker 2:Uh , so from orange, orange, like I say, that's the entry level. And we work a lot with our entry level coaches in order to accelerate their progress. So the orange level people tend to stick around as to stay in the orange level for about four to eight weeks, no longer than that. And then long then we move into to the blue template. And the reason we can do that is because we do evaluations during, we do more evaluations in the beginning. And this kind of made sense, if you look at what people do in terms of, of on-ramp programs for their, their athletes, you usually, if you have an on-ramp PRO program for a group training facility, the the first couple of weeks usually includes more personal training. It's the same principle here. So if we add more evaluations in the beginning, we accelerate the, the progress of the, the beginner coach. And
Speaker 1:What's blue to purple timeline? Where would that be approximately?
Speaker 2:After about three months, we start evaluation , uh, evaluating according to the purple template.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's amazing. And listeners, you cannot start doing this if you don't help your coaches along with these evaluations and tell them where they can get better, right? You have to figure that out and put this stuff in place. Let's look at purple. What's in here that , uh, wasn't in blue?
Speaker 2:Well, it becomes the demands increase for, for I think the spec , the specific warmup is the best part to , to pull out here and look at,
Speaker 1:Let me scroll down here.
Speaker 2:So in the specific warmup, we expect more , at this point, we expect , uh, the coach to, to be , um, more effective at teaching. And , uh, the TSDC , uh, is stands for tell show do check , which is a , a , a very effective , uh, teaching technique where you name the movement first, you demo the moment, you show it, then you have the athletes do the movement, and then you check whatever focus point you gave them. So we expect , uh, at this point, the , the , the coach to be more efficient at teaching. We also expect them to use more progression. So that's breaking down more complex movements. Uh , and in order to , to build them up into complete movement patterns , uh, we also expect more in terms of triage, like what's the most important fault to correct first. Uh, we also expect them to start using techniques like WR , the WICC ar , which stands for watch , uh, identify q , check , acknowledge, repeat. So at this point we expect more in terms of this. Uh , and then , uh, if , uh, you remember that it was used cues for static and dynamic false . Now we also expect them not to just use a variety of cues, but actually , uh, understanding and using the different cues like verbal cues, visual cues and tactile cues and so on.
Speaker 1:If I look back at my own coach development, when I first finished with the CrossFit level, one orange would've been about appropriate after doing classes for like six months, I was starting to get into this stuff where this was more natural for me, where I could say, open your hips, or I could tell someone, you know, exactly how I could show them how to do it, and this is what I want, replicate this. I could start using different ways to connect with people, different language, different cues for different people. And that all came as a result of doing it for longer. And this stuff was accessible to me at this purple level. I probably could have started to grasp some of this stuff. Orange, I couldn't, right? Because it was just like, I am kind of freaking out about coaching eight people for the first time. My main priority is making sure everyone has a barbell and we're not, you know, everybody's spaced. Like it was those little detailed things. But after a while , that stuff becomes natural. The whiteboard beef brief becomes natural. My personality comes out, I get to this stuff now as a coach, I can start being really effective where I can start spotting cues across the , that's a muted hip . Here's how I'm gonna fix it. I want you to do this, you do this, listen . And you start showing them replicate this movement all according to a development plan that, you know, I didn't actually give that to my coaches. I just expected them to do this right off day one. And Carl , you've got this figured out. So is there anything else in purple that's specific?
Speaker 2:No, but, but just , uh, you made me think of something there. It , it , and it could even go the the wrong way. Like, if you don't provide any type of feedback for, for your staff, they can very easy to develop bad habits. And I saw this in the past. I saw somebody who started coaching , I thought like, oh yeah, man, this, this guy's a rockstar. He, he , he's doing everything right. And then I then I checked back , uh, a couple of months late and I was like, whoa, what , what , what's happened? Like I see all of these bad habits and, and, and now they, he got some new weird influences that I don't necessarily agree with. So again, like if, if you, if you're just consistently doing something in terms of providing feedback, I think you're, you're already doing a good job.
Speaker 1:Yeah. My, my , uh, my example of that was , um, when Kelly Star wrote the , uh, supple leopard book that came out, and a bunch of, a few of my coaches got a hold of it, and all of a sudden everyone was bleeding torque, but none of my clients knew what that meant. So they kept saying, oh , you're , you're bleeding torque. And your client's just like, what does that mean? So that's a classic example of what, what happened , uh, at ground level for me and listeners, if , uh, if you're on our podcast and can't see this stuff, head to our YouTube channel and you will find all of this stuff that you can look at and take a peek at. So if you're listening and can't see it, we're reading it out. But if you wanna see the visuals, you can see these exact spreadsheets , uh, on our YouTube channel. Okay. Is that, is that pretty much it for purple? Is there anything else you wanna highlight in here?
Speaker 2:If you wanna move on to Brown, I don't think there's a point of, of highlighting more things in, in purple here.
Speaker 1:The point, guys, things are scaling up and more is expected of the coach at each level. We're gonna go into Brown, and here we are.
Speaker 2:I don't know what to highlight specifically here, but, but what I can say on a , on a more, in more general terms is that, like for each level, I expect more in terms of teaching, I expect more in terms of seeing and correcting, I expect more in terms of group management and presence and attitude, and of course demo and application as well. So I might change the phrasing a little bit between purple and brown. So in, in , instead of of just saying, explaining the what and the why and the how I say effectively explaining the what and the why and the how. So, so there is a little bit of, of , of just playing with words here in, in the evaluation template at some points.
Speaker 1:And in Brown, this is where they have a raise, right? This is, this is , uh, the le the CrossFit level three, and they get a raise if they achieve this. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:When we start evaluating with this form , uh, it's usually either time for the level three, or they've done the level three. So that's when we start using the , uh, the brown template, or sorry, no, that's, let me check real quick here so I don't say things wrong. Uh , that , that's actually after this. So this, at, at Brown level, they have CrossFit level two, they , they've done the CrossFit level two course, and then we have the black level, which is not included in the , in this , uh, spreadsheet that we have in front of us. But, but that's essentially the same thing. I changed the phrasing, I changed the words a little bit. Uh , I might say you have to master teaching, or I , you have to master the thow , do check, you have to master , uh, uh, watch, identify, queue check, acknowledge, repeat.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that's, that's essentially where as an evaluator, you're looking for that virtuosity. I , I think for lack of a better term, where you're saying like, that's a good squad and instruction, but that's elite squat instruction, or that's, that's queing at a good level, that's queuing at a master career level. So you're really kind of putting a fine point on the pencil. The thing we didn't talk about that I'll just bring up here is on the spreadsheet, you've got your evaluation criteria, and you've got a column, a green column that says most of the time a , a yellow column that says sometimes and a d uh , red column that says rarely. So what that is, I'm guessing is you're just putting Xs in boxes and saying you are doing, you are greeting members by name most of the time. Good work, if it's sometimes or rarely, that's an area for improvement. Is that how you're using that?
Speaker 2:That's correct. That's it in a nutshell. It's very simple. If I can , if I may highlight something from, from the brown level , uh, it , it's, it's maybe stuff in the workout prep where, where I now expect the, the coach to, to scale more effectively,
Speaker 1:More effectively. That's it. I like that.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Uh , I, I expect them to be even better at balancing safety and atten and intensity. Those things , uh, are , are typically there's a higher demand at this level , uh, for, for the coach.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So at that point, it's something , it's stuff like this where instead of just saying, you know, we're gonna scale , uh, a deadlift to , um, a squat or some lower body movement, you're saying, I know you as an athlete and I'm gonna scale your deadlift to a sumo stance deadlift, because I know this sal angle helps you specifically get better results with less back pain. So it's like that level of like, I know what I'm doing and I can pick the right scaling and modification, not just a scale or a modification. Does that make sense? Yeah. So that's what we're doing .
Speaker 2:That , that, that's a good example. And it's also having more knowledge about, about the clients, like you're saying, and, and, and understanding where they are in the process and why it , it's, it's good to scale in a specific way on a specific day.
Speaker 1:Okay. I'm gonna jump out of this screen share and go back to the main thing here. Uh, so what you've got there, guys is a , a , a total ascension plan all the way through. And if you have coaches and you just start them, how do you make them better? This is a great place to start, Carl . When you have , when you created this stuff, did you, how did you see it going? Like, was it overwhelming for you when you're like, oh God, I've got these four or five levels now. Like was it a confusing, complicated thing and how did you manage to implement it successfully and bring people through it?
Speaker 2:I had my golden standard, so I knew what I wanted from an elite level coach. That's something that, that me and Oscar has been working on for a long time. So we know we had a very good idea of, of what we think a perfect class is. So when we wrote that down, it was quite easy to just scale back and say, okay, can we expect this of this coach, for instance, who's been with us for a long time? No , we can actually, we can even expect this from that coach who's an experienced coach. So we have to remove these two, three things and that we , and then we just continue to apply it to the rest of the coaches. Well, what about this coach? Can, can we expect all of these things to this coach? Now we probably have to remove this and this and this. And we work , just worked our way back. And then we worked our way back to where we felt like, well, this is minimum level, it has to be this. And then we had to adjust our basic training program for coaches so that we made sure they met the standard before they started coaching. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah. How do you give some , like, let's say someone is at the orange level and they get a bunch of check marks in the red box and they need to do some improvements. What have you got in place to train people to give them resources to improve? How do you manage that and make them better?
Speaker 2:Well, I , I think, I think the actual ascension plan kind of solves that problem already because we know that we, we we're not gonna, we're not gonna , uh, give them , uh, we're not gonna exam them from our coach basic training before we know that they meet the standard. Then we just have to repeat. We just have to repeat the evaluation one more time. We provide feedback and we say, these are the things that we want to see you implement the next class. So that's
Speaker 1:The evaluation, the feedback do great . Yeah.
Speaker 2:Correct. So it's, it's that feedback loop all the time.
Speaker 1:Listeners, how often have you evaluated your coaches? Was it, has it been in the last 3, 6, 8, 10, 12 months perhaps?
Speaker 2:Sorry. Uh, repeat the question please. No,
Speaker 1:I'm just asking the listeners here and I'm like , say how, how long has it been since you evaluated your coaches? Has it been a year? Maybe <laugh> , because I like what you're saying there. If you do this at intervals, then you just go through the standards. You say, oh , you didn't quite meet this one. You , you know, focus on saying everyone's name every time during class. That's your, that's your training essentially, right? And you keep them moving through that and they get better and better. And as you do these evaluations, but the system breaks down if you don't do evaluations.
Speaker 2:Correct. And this is why you need that second track. So you can't just have this tiered, tiered evaluation template. You also need that , uh, coach roadmap . So what happens during the first four week , four weeks, what happens up until 12 weeks? What happens until 26 week ? What happens until 52 weeks? And after that, how does the feedback loop look like? How often do you do evaluations? And for us, we find it very valuable to do more evaluations in the beginning because it gets the coach going. It, it speeds up the process tremendously. So just more feedback in the beginning, just like you give more feedback in the beginning to beginner athletes
Speaker 1:Listers . I'll break this down for you. Carl is talking at a black level gym owner as his black level gym owner, right? So this is a guy who's been in the business for a very long time. He's put in a ton of work with his partner Oscar, who's also very invested in coach development. I've looked through all these spreadsheets and all these resources there . Incredible. And they're very detailed. You, if you're a not a black level gym owner, start at the orange level. And that orange level in, if we take Carl's system and apply it to gym ownership is going to be setting out a coach evaluation form and evaluating coaches regularly at intervals. That's your starting point. And what Chris Cooper's always talked about is like, what's your goal? Your goal is basically to be Carl and Oscar at some point. What's halfway? What's halfway to halfway? What's my first step to get to Halfway to halfway. Your first step is a coach evaluation form regular coach evaluations. That's where you start. And then after that, you can start building these things out. You can take a look at these screenshots and do exactly what Carl is doing, but the first steps are just that form and the regular evaluations because the entire system will break down without it. Carl , as we close this show out, talk to me about black level coaches at your gym. Are they creating careers that are gonna last instead of just two, three years of a fitness hobby ?
Speaker 2:I certainly hope so. And I have to say also what you need consider on top of all of this, like, we made the example of full-time coaches so far, but we actually have black level part-time coaches. So , so I have, I have , uh, ooh , how many do I have? I have like three people who have the black level or they are , uh, the across it level three, but they have other jobs and they coach , uh, something like between 15 and 20 classes per month
Speaker 1:At an elite level,
Speaker 2:At an elite level. And , and they're super invested , uh, in getting better all the time. But we, the , the example was full-time coaches today. So yes, I also have full-time coaches at black level , and I do believe that they contribute tremendously to the value for the client, for themself and also for the business. So we have this win win win situation with them.
Speaker 1:I'll ask you this as a final question. Do they actually get belts or what do they, do they get a certificate or how, how are these levels shown there ?
Speaker 2:There are multiple ways of celebrating this. Yeah, we do not have belts. <laugh> .
Speaker 1:Okay. I thought she was coaching shirts of a different color or something. <laugh> .
Speaker 2:No, we, we, we, we don't do that. Yeah , we are , we're much too humble and they are much too humble. I think they would be awkward , uh, if, if, if, if , if that was the case. But we do put their diplomas on the wall. We let it be known and we celebrate it. Uh , once , uh, a coach reach reaches either, well, external validations are super simple to , um, celebrate when , uh, our coaches get level two. We brag about it in our social media, we brag about them in class and so on. Same thing for level three. Of course, we brag about them and , and celebrate them when they get there.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for sharing all this, Carl . That is an incredible look behind the curtain at the elite level coach section . Thank you so much. Thank you. Elite level coaches get great results for clients and great clients who get great , great results, pay a lot of money and stay at your gym a long time. That creates a business that will last for decades and provides a great life for you as the owner. If you have questions about coach development and coach Ascension, start with a plan and then evaluate your coaches regularly and then start looking at the stuff Carl has done and scale your business up so that you can be an elite level gym owner as well. If you wanna work faster to become an elite level gym owner, book a call. Viva link our show notes and talk about mentorship. That was called Solberg, and this is Run a Profitable Gym . I'm your host, Mike Warkin , and thanks for watching and listening. Please hit subscribe wherever you are. And now here is Chris Cooper with a final message.
Speaker 3:Hey, it's two Brain founder Chris Cooper. With a quick note , we created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym . Thousands of gym owners, just like you have already joined in the group. We share sound advice about the business of fitness. Every day I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I'd love to have you in that group. It's Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gym owners united.com to join. Do it today.
