Friday 4 - You Need to Shout at Your Team More (Mostly Kidding...I Think) 10/11/19

Published: Fri, 10/11/19

Here's some recommended reading to either wrap up your week, or kick off your weekend.

Let's start things off with a blog I published on my own website:

3 Reasons to Build a Robust Internship Program at Your Gym - Three reasons why starting an internship program might be the right move for your gym.

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:

Want To Really Motivate Your Employees? An Eye-Opening Study Of Sports Coaches Offers A Disturbing Clue - Should we get just a little bit irritable and direct in our efforts to motivate our employees, or the exact opposite? I've got to admit, the findings of the Cal-Berkley study referenced in this piece caught me by surprise. Shout out to Friday-4 reader, Bob Panico, for putting this one from back in September on my radar.

How Recovery Can Make Entrepreneurs More Resilient – and More Successful - Most of us can safely say that we work too hard. We rarely put down our phones, treat our business email account as a job that is up and running during all waking hours, and rarely take real vacations from our growing (or struggling) fitness businesses. The author of this post takes a different approach. I found this quote to be especially refreshing: "I view quality downtime as a measure of success."

2 Ways to Learn the Unspoken Rules at a Company Before Accepting a Job - There were a whole lot more than two suggestions for evaluating a potential employer in this piece, including specific things to look for in the work space if you find yourself with the opportunity to interview on-site. There are also some great tips for your auditing process if you are limited to a phone interview and want to get deeper than the generic "tell me what a work day looks like" question everyone else seems to ask.

3 Ways to Make the Most of Your Alumni Network - We could all probably be better at maximizing our returns from our college alumni network, and this article shares some good ideas of how we can do so. Beyond that, I think we can lose sight of the fact that there is more than one kind of alumni network that we might be a part of. For example, we have 250+ CSP intern alums kicking around in the fitness space after 12+ years of operation, and this would also qualify as an immensely valuable resource for those who have been through the program. With this in mind, I'd encourage you to take stock of your former places of employment, internships, etc, and consider employing the tips from this piece there as well.

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