If there's one lesson I've learned since I started sending a weekly newsletter, it is that people don't
open emails on the Friday preceding a holiday weekend. With this in mind, I've decided to hit you with an early edition of my Friday 4 this week. Hopefully some of the material I've pulled together this time around will help you innovate or evolve your own business during the month of July.
Let's start this edition of my Friday-4 with the blog post I've published this week: - Gym Owner Musings - Installment #6 - From niche development, to bundling services, and even comparing the management of CSP to running Saturday Night Live, I covered a lot of random material in this edition
of musings.
My Friday FOUR:
Four pieces of content I've consumed this past week that will influence my future blog material and challenge me to think differently about how I manage Cressey Sports Performance - as always, I'm looking to bring you some business-specific information from outside of the world of fitness.
Enjoy: - How I Built This - TRX: Randy Hetrick - I'm a sucker for a good entreprenuerial startup story, and even more so when it
applies to a piece of equipment that just about every gym in America now owns. Listen to this podcast if you are unfamiliar with the backstory on TRX. Most of us seem to be aware that it was created by a Navy Seal, but not many realize the business plan itself was crafted and fine-tuned as this former soldier worked his way through the Stanford Business school.
- The Secret to Small Talk - The best trainers, gym owners, and professionals in general are those who excel at small talk and effortless casual interaction. This article introduced me to a fascinating genetic disorder called Williams Syndrome, which causes people to be exceedingly friendly. There are some
extremely important takeaways in here for service professionals. "We’re so terrified of that one-in-100 chance of embarrassment or rejection that we avoid the 99 interactions that are more likely to be fulfilling."
- MBAs May Not Be Worth it For Entrepreneurs Anymore. - I got my MBA for the wrong reasons. At the time, I felt as if I'd hit my ceiling for advancement within the marketing department I was working in. Instead of making the logical move of pursuing
employment elsewhere, I decided to escape the rat race for a one-year MBA. I took comfort in telling myself that "this will be the perfect networking opportunity." I did network...constantly. And it was great. The problem was that my primary objective was actually avoiding the realities of working a 9-to-5 gig for a calendar year. When all was said and done, things appear to have worked out for me. This being said, if I'd read this article 10+ years ago when I was applying to programs, I
may have taken a different route.
- What's The iPhone Done to Us? - Life circumstances of CSP athletes often shift, requiring that they move away from our area and eventually select a
new gym. The most common feedback that we receive is that we've created gym snobs - people who resent their new training environment and long for the days of training in our gym. It appears that people are quick to forget our typically awful music selection. I am of the belief that one of the reasons people fall in love with training here is our strict rule that phones are not allowed on the training floor. When no one is scrolling through their Instagram feed or snapping mid-lift selfies,
human interaction tends to scale upward. We could all use a lot less smartphone time in our lives.
Make sure to let me know if you come across any material that you think I'd enjoy. More importantly, have a great weekend!
- Pete
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