296. Why Can't I Find Good Staff For My Pilates Studio? With Raphael Bender

PE - Why Can't I Find Good Staff For My Pilates Studio?

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Why cant I find good staff: [: 00:00:00

Yeah. And, um, today's topic, dear listener, is something that we were just having a chat about and, uh, we thought this, gee, this would be a good podcast. So, and the topic is, why can't I find any good stuff? So, um, Yeah, set this up Forest Jules, keep, keep the, keep the, change the names to protect the innocent.

ep the conversation flowing. [: 00:01:00

Yeah, the answer first, let's talk about what the problem is because you were relying on a conversation to start with. We were chatting and you were telling me about a conversation you had with someone in one of our mastermind groups. And so, yeah, keep the names, uh, secret to protect the innocent, but you know, who, what was the conversation?

or, you know, whatever it is.[: 00:02:00

And so they can't. Find people, they can't find instructors to, um, they can't find good instructors who want to work in that area or have those specific skills. So they're looking for specific skills and they can't find, find it. And therefore they can't get the instructors they want. You know what? I see this a lot in, and I see it in job ads as well a lot.

Which is like, I'm taught by, you know, X, Y, Z in this very particular lineage. It was taught by someone who was taught by Jay Grimes, or, you know, uh, I teach this very specific style of classical Pilates, or I teach this very specific style of athletic Pilates, or I teach, you know, Pilates infused with, you know, whatever, um, yeah, Zumba or, you know, some very like, um, specific kind of genre of Pilates, and I can't find.

Instructors trained in that [: 00:03:00

And on the flip side, I see that too. And on the flip side, I see job ads that are like extremely specific and cut out like 98 percent of all possible instructors. Like, you know, Pilates instructor wanted must be, you know, comprehensively 550 hour training in this very specific school of Pilates, you know, descended from this lineage and, you know, You know, like that really limits the number of people who can apply to like virtually zero.

So [: 00:04:00

It doesn't know how to teach classical Pilates, or if you teach Pilates infused with Zumba, well, you don't want to get someone who's a classical Pilates teacher because it's not going to, it's not going to be a match for what your clients are used to and what your business is about. So how do we solve this conundrum Jules?

we opened a Pilates studio in: 2007

n through this whole journey [: 00:05:00

We teach a very specific style. I mean, we teach the original contrology and we teach a modern fitness style flow and we teach it with an evidence through an evidence based lens. So that's a very, very specific mixture of. Styles and we found it very, very difficult to find people. Like when we were like, okay, we need somebody to, you know, to become one of our trainers, like, well, there's like six people in the world who have got that, that particular skill set.

you know, what, what's your [: 00:06:00

It's like, you have to get people first who are, you know, Like a hundred and 10 percent on board with you and your vision. So basically you need to get the cultural side sorted. You need to have, um, people who are just so passionate about what you're doing, that your values, um, you know, where you're heading.

f it's one person, you know, [: 00:07:00

That stuff is teachable, but the cultural stuff and the values, that's not really teachable. Maybe it will be teachable over. 20 years, I don't know, but like a lot of it's personality and all sorts of things. So you've got to get the cultural fit correct first, and then the other stuff is teachable. Even if you have to put them through your whole program, if you can get them on board, they're passionate.

They're like so pumped to be there. They love it. They want to, you know, be there. They want to be there forever. You've got to get that right first. Um, because you don't want someone who is skilled, they know the program, they know how to teach, they're fantastic at teaching, but they just are dragging their heels with everything else.

such a drag on the business. [: 00:08:00

They're not going to be a good teacher. They're not going to be popular. Like they might technically be a skilled teacher, but they're not going to be a good employee and they're not going to be a good teammate. And they're not going to be a good instructor in your studio because they're going to resist everything.

Yeah, because they're not aligned, not because they're a bad person, but because they're not aligned, like the way that you want them to do it is not the way they think it should be done because you don't have cultural alignment. So let's go back. And I a hundred percent agree that step one in solving this, like, or I would say step zero in solving this is.

igher for cultural alignment [: 00:09:00

Because like you say, Jules, skills are much easier to train than culture. And so let's just examine Can I just say something first? Yeah, I was just going to ask you what you, what you mean by cultural fit, but let's bookmark that and you tell me what you want to Well, I kind of was going to say, Um, do you have your, like, have you thought about your values?

e when we started out in our [: 00:10:00

It's such a great culture. And then as the years went by, we realized, I actually, maybe our culture isn't so great that what we thought was a great culture actually wasn't what we now think of as a great culture. So what do you, when, when, when, When you hear the word, the term great culture, great workplace culture, you know, what do you, what do you understand that to mean?

Well, everyone is, everyone is aligned to the same purpose, the same mission. We're all going in the same direction and we know what that is. It's something that we have decided together. The company has decided what those, like it's based on values. And the company has decided what those values are and it's, and the values are based on our mission.

re all like driven by those, [: 00:11:00

And, you know, some of those will be written and explicit. Some of them will be unspoken, you know, like we don't have a rule saying like you must wear clothes at work, but like everyone does it. Everyone understands that that's, that's what you do. And you don't, you don't have to, like, basically you refer to the values pretty much on a daily basis, but you're not, yeah, and you're kind of talking about them, but you also, it's, it's basically what you don't, what I want to say is you don't.

ed set of values and mission [: 00:12:00

We're working from the same set of, let's say values and mission, I think is a really nice, simple way of thinking about it. Mission is where we're going. Values are how we get there. Yeah. How we behave along the way. And, you know, many sort of large corporations have, you know, super bland mission statements.

And values, you know, we believe in, you know, upholding humanity and whatever, like some things that just doesn't really mean anything. It's like, well, okay, no, I don't think many people believe in like pushing down humanity, you know, so that's kind of a meaningless statement because everybody believes it.

say identifying your values [: 00:13:00

from other businesses. Like if you, if your value is like, we want to be nice to people and love Pilates, it's like, well, you know, that's, that's not really different. I mean, you assume that every Pilates instructor has those values. Those are shared values of every Pilates instructor. So, you know, you don't want a sociopath Pilates instructor.

ink that your values need to [: 00:14:00

We've been through several iterations of our values and we've got it less and less wrong each time. We've. And we've got less and less values. We've got fewer and fewer values. I think we started out with like seven. Seven. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now we're down to, years later, we're down to three, and I can now remember them all.

And we used to have values that were, I think, more generic. I can't even remember what they were.

d what are our three values, [: 00:15:00

Truth. Yeah, we do. We use, do use 'em every day and we, you know, we arrived at those after.

Thinking about what actually is important to us in our, in our actual everyday interactions with people and what are the unspoken things that truly define like valuable communication and valuable behaviors and that the absence of these things. Defines the, you know, what we don't want in the company.

company that's complicated, [: 00:16:00

And then, yeah, if you're having, if you're struggling with finding the values, think of what you don't want. And then it's the, the other. And, I mean, you know, dear listener, I don't know, I mean, you're into Pilates, so maybe this doesn't sound like airy fairy bullshit to you, um, but if it kind of does sound a bit like airy fairy bullshit, I promise you, we like making money in this business, and we like getting results, and we like making a real fucking difference for our clients.

ake money, make a difference [: 00:17:00

Live, you know, these values, people who also share those values are like, fuck, this, that's awesome. I can't, you know, I love how simple this is. I love how you guys are just no BS. I love how you guys just are constantly improving and growing and changing and how you challenge me to constantly improve and grow and change.

not a fit. Like we recently. [: 00:18:00

That was option A or option B was I've read the Breathe Education culture and I've got reservations and our culture lays out exactly what we stand for and exactly what we oppose. And, uh, Probably two thirds of the people who applied, and our culture is just written on our website. Like it's a, if you go to our website, there's a top level navigation item there that says culture, and you just click on that and there's, here's what we believe in, here's our mission, here's our values, here's what, here's what we agree with, here's what we disagree with.

vations. And of course, when [: 00:19:00

Uh, and the, the very small number of people who passed, you know, every stage of the application, including that one, like we interviewed and everyone we interviewed was a fucking rockstar, you know, and we're in a position where we had like three people that we would have hired every single one of them in a heartbeat.

And we had to choose only one of them was like Sophie's choice.

t exercise to do it together [: 00:20:00

Yeah. And, you know, let me tell you, dear listener, you know, you can have seven, you can have five, but honestly, I couldn't even remember them when we had five. I think three is the number that I can seem to remember them all. And. If you can't remember them, it's like, I think my, my max is two, obviously.

fs and values that are most, [: 00:21:00

Very, very clearly and consistently, you will just attract people. And maybe those people won't apply for jobs. Maybe they'll be your clients, you know, maybe they'll want to work for you on reception or whatever, but then. If you have a very specific niche in terms of the skill set that you require, well, you might have to take someone and train them up in that skill set.

f the combo that we just had [: 00:22:00

And this is what our absolute best team members do as well. So yeah, walk us through, walk us through some of those behaviors. Of our students. Yeah, and how you learned about this? Um, well, what I found just by observing like, um, the work, some of the workshops, observing some of the onboarding calls, was basically our absolute Rockstar students.

. They're, you know, they're [: 00:23:00

They're, you know, going on, onto their reformer and practicing the workshop in that, you know, to themselves. Saying it out loud, filming themselves on the, on their iPhone and then watching themselves back. So it's like, they're just repeating, repeating, repeating again and again, and again, just getting the reps in, in between the actual workshops.

Right. And so that person becomes so much easier to train because they're fanatically obsessed with becoming the best they can possibly be. And they're a thousand percent brought into the value of doing it the right way and doing it the best possible way. And so you just have to tell them, Hey, I want it done this way.

And they're like, okay, great. I'll go and do 10, 000 reps in my bedroom until I've nailed it. And then come back tomorrow and go, okay, is, is this the way you want it done? Whereas if somebody is not aligned or they're only partially aligned, you'll tell them and they'll go, nah, no, I'm not sure if that's the way it should be done.

Or I'm just going [: 00:24:00

We've learned that the hard way many, many, many times and we're like, Oh, it's not that bad. If you have to basically make an excuse for an employee, it is that bad. If you have, if there's a but in there, you know, if you say, she's, she's a great person or, you know, her classes aren't full, but yeah, yeah, oh yeah.

values? Do you think? Well, [: 00:25:00

So, you know, one of ours is simplicity. So we might create a scenario, whether it's an email, you know, writing it simply, or whether it's, you know, simplifying, you know, having a chaotic situation, what would you do in that scenario? Um, yeah, so basically creating scenarios around each of the values for the, and, and ask that person, how would they deal with it or how would they, what would they do in this scenario?

we, we hire for trainers is [: 00:26:00

And we're very, very explicit about our values. Like we, we try to be as black and white as possible and it's like, okay, if you a hundred percent believe these things, you're going to be a fit. And if you'd less than a hundred percent believe these things. You know, this is not for you. And then we ask people to submit a short video.

're, what they understand by [: 00:27:00

You know, my Pilates technique or something. It's like, okay, great. We all want that. But it's like, I want to be better at confronting uncomfortable situations. And I want to learn to manage a room of people more effectively. And, you know, like I want to grow as an educator and become more able to spot, you know, the gaps in students learning and know how to bridge those gaps from where they are to where they need to be.

Like a question like that reveals somebody who truly does value growth. Cause I've thought about it. Hmm.

your values and your values [: 00:28:00

Does this color suit me? You know, um, And it's about implementing them as well. It's like, you know, we've had that value for a while and we're only now just really starting to like all of the teams starting to up the, yeah. Up their skills in, you know, kind of like speaking the truth and being, yeah, just feeling confident about it.

of the time we don't say the [: 00:29:00

Or, you know, like there's lots of sort of euphemisms that we use and we use these in, in, in Pilates and, and business and training, you know, just as much. And we, we just flat out lie a lot of the time. We say, Oh no, you're doing great. When in reality, we think, no, you're fucking not doing great. Your class is only half full.

abbit hole of what You know, [: 00:30:00

I love how you guys are just no BS and you just say, you know, it's just real talk, you know, and other people fucking hate it, which is fine because, you know, we're not for everybody. And if we were for everybody, we'd be for nobody.

Truth.

ell, welcome, welcome on the [: 00:31:00