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

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PE - Why cant I find good staff: [00:00:00] Welcome to Pilates Elephants. I am your host, Raphael Bender, and I'm here with a very special guest, Ms. Julie Stoll. Welcome. Well, it's great to be here, Raphael. Yeah. And, um, so it just so happens to your listener that Julie Stoll and I are married. We are indeed. So, uh, and it also happens to be the case that, uh, we work, we work together in Breathe Education.

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.

Keep the conversation flowing. [00:01:00] Well, I mean, for me, the answer is simple. Sorry, rather than the answer, set this up. And so like, you know, what does it mean? Like, we don't want the answer. Not yet. Well, if we get the answer, then that's the end of the podcast, you know, so we want to drag it out just a little bit more than.

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?

Yeah, the conversation. And I know that we've had conversations like this before with other students and studio owners. Um, and that is that they, they have a very narrow, um, you know, they have their market and it's a narrow market and they're just. Um, basically appealing it to a certain crowd, like whether it's athletes 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] specific, you know, lineage, genre, style, discipline, mixture of particular disciplines, et cetera. Yeah. And I feel like therefore, um, what I'm seeing is that a lot of studio owners, a lot of, um, yeah, a lot of bosses putting up with, um, under par staffing, basically. They're not happy with the staff they have.

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] yeah, therein lies the conundrum, but so what should those studio owners do if they do teach a very, I mean, just say you teach like a specific style of classical Pilates, right. Or a specific style of athletic Pilates and you'd like, all right, so if you're a classical Pilates teacher, you don't want to get someone in who.

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?

Well, hold on before we get there, dear listener, let's keep the suspense going just a little bit longer. Um, cause I feel like we kind of have solved this at Breathe. And that's what I want to talk about a little bit because way back in the day, we had this same problem because we opened a Pilates studio in 2007 called Breathe Wellbeing.

And we've been through this whole journey [00:05:00] of hiring instructors and then not being able to find instructors. So then training our own instructors and then having a business that trained instructors for the last decade. They're not being able to find people to train the instructors in the business because we had, we have a very specific style of Pilates.

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.

So, but I feel like we've kind of solved that now, but you know, like what, what's your, you know, what, what's your [00:06:00] take on, you know, why this is a problem and what people could do differently. to alleviate it? Well, I think you have to come at it from, I guess my take on it is you have to come at it from a different angle.

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.

Like, so they are there, they are there with you, whatever journey you're going on. And I think that stuff you can't teach. You can't teach the values. You can't teach the culture. So even if it's one person, you know, [00:07:00] start with that. And obviously, you know, they, like Raph said, they need to be able to teach the, whatever specific style of Pilates you're doing, but you can teach that stuff.

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.

When you tell them to change something, they're resistant. That is just such a drag on the business. [00:08:00] It's such a drag on your resources. It's like, Oh my God. Well, the reality is it's not worth it. That person who's. You know, like you say, skilled in the particular style. But doesn't have a, a cultural match.

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.

To, to get a hundred percent cultural alignment, like higher for cultural alignment [00:09:00] and train for skills. That's, that's like, that is the basic level here. And there's an advanced level that we'll talk about in a moment, but I think the, if you are struggling to find the right people, you've got to find the right culture fit, and then train the skills.

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?

You have to have your values first. So I guess culture is built on your values. What do you value? What are your, what are the basic values of your business? So let's, let's go back to, to step minus one, then we're going backwards and, uh, and define what we mean by culture. Cause when we started out in our [00:10:00] business for years, we thought we had a great culture and we used to like, You know, stand on top of the hill and go, gee, everyone look at our great culture.

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.

And so we're all basically heading in the same direction. We're all aligned and we're all like driven by those, [00:11:00] by the mission. And then the values kind of help us make the decision towards that mission. Right. Another way of saying that, the way I think of it is culture is a shared set of values, behaviors, beliefs, assumptions, and goals.

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.

You don't have rules, you kind of like work to work from the values rather than working from the rules. Right. So, right. So, yeah. So if culture is, you know, can be defined as a shared set of values and mission [00:12:00] or another way that we could say it is just, you know, shared beliefs, behaviors, you know, rules, conventions, assumptions, et cetera.

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.

And I think the key thing when. Identifying, and I say identifying your values [00:13:00] rather than choosing your values, because I think what you should do when you're defining your company values, even if you're just like a solo operator and you want to hire one person, I think you need to have a set of values and those values, I think should be the deeply held assumptions and beliefs that you have as a studio owner about how you want your business to run, like in a, in a fundamental way that differentiates you.

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.

And I don't think you need to have a value that says we're not sociopaths. That's one of those unspoken things, like we wear clothes. So I think that your values need to [00:14:00] be. Not unique to you, but specific to you enough that they're going to attract the right people and repel the people who are not a fit.

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.

But some of them we've, we've changed quite dramatically. And we're now down to three. And what are our three values, [00:15:00] Jules? There's one, um, About keeping it simple. There's one about growth mindset and I always forget the third one. Truth. Oh, truth. Yeah. . I am into truth. Yeah, simplicity. I use, I use them every day.

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.

Like if we think, if I think of a company that's complicated, [00:16:00] full of bullshit and where people have a victim mindset where it's not their fault, like that's the exact opposite of the company that I want. Yeah. It's a good way to think of it. The exact opposite of what you don't want, like the exact opposite of what you want.

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.

And we don't, we don't, we don't, we really try not to do things that don't help us make money, make a difference [00:17:00] for our clients and, you know, make the world a better place. And so we only have these values. We only stick with them and think about them all the time. Because. I actually make a difference to those things that we care about and I think the, the most important thing that the values do for us is allow us to attract and keep the right people and filter out the people who are not a good fit for our, for our company, because we, when we.

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.

And by the, on the flip side, it, it, it repels people who are not a fit. Like we recently. [00:18:00] Advertised for a trainer to be a trainer at Breathe Education. And we, you know, we put in the job application. One of the questions was, you know, I have read the Breathe Education culture and I, it resonates strongly with me.

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.

And, Probably about two thirds of the people who filled out the application put in, I've, I've read the culture and I have reservations. And of course, when [00:19:00] you click on, when you select that, it takes you to the next screen is like, Oh, well, I'm sorry. It looks like we're not a fit. So thanks for not applying.

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.

I do want to say, like, just backtrack a little bit and say that, you know, if you are in a small business and you don't have a lot of people on your team, or you have just one or a couple of people who really You know, on board with where you're going, but you haven't clarified your values yet. I, I do really recommend that you do it with those team members who are on board because it is a really great exercise to do it together [00:20:00] when you're in that, you know, fairly beginning stages and you're, you've got a close knit team, um, It's just such a valuable exercise and it really brings them in it, you know, they get by into the process and that's, um, yeah, I think that's really valuable.

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.

Um, so, so I think, you know, like step number, you know, the first step anyway, whatever number we want to put on it is to get clear on your values. And I know this feel, it might feel like it's not more, how's that going to get me better instructors? It's like, well, if you can get super clear on the. The beliefs and values that are most, [00:21:00] that are absolute deal breakers for you, then say that very clearly and behave that way.

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.

But if you've got someone who's a 10 out of 10 match to your values and beliefs and mission, and they're just, they'll run through a brick wall to make it happen, you can train that person. Much more easily in the skillset. Yeah. And waste a lot less time. Which segues me into, you know, another part of the combo that we just had [00:22:00] before we came on AirDuals, which was about what our sort of absolute best students do that is not, you know, a requirement of the course.

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, well, they go above and beyond. They, you know, they go through the coursework, they do their workshops, um, but in between time, they just practice. They practice the heck out of anything they can, you know, and they, they're thinking about it constantly. They're, you know, they're [00:23:00] practicing in the shower, in their head.

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] to do the bare minimum. You told me to do 10 reps. Okay. 10. 0 reps. You kind of got to drag them. Yeah. You got to drag them. Drag them kicking and screaming. There's a sense of resistance. Yeah. And dear listener, if you're feeling any sense of resistance, even a small one, that's a sign of cultural misalignment, values misalignment, mission misalignment.

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.

So all right, so the values, so you get clear on your values, how do, how do you screen for values? Do you think? Well, [00:25:00] I mean, The way we do it is we basically do the value screen first before the interview. And it's just a matter of like having your values clear and, you know, having your values clear and then talking about different scenarios, like around those values.

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?

Yeah. What we do, um, with instructors, trainers, when we, we hire for trainers is [00:26:00] we ask people to amongst other things, read our values on the website and say, okay, do you, you know, 10 out of 10 agree with these or less than 10, if it's less than 10, it's like, yeah, no, this don't apply, this is not going to fit.

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.

And usually there's one, there's three questions that we ask and usually either one or two of those questions are about values. So we might ask a question like, uh, you know, um, I think in a recent job, uh, ad for trainers, we said something like, you know, how do you want to grow? You know, within this role and, you know, you can tell by the sorts of answers that people give what they're, what they understand by [00:27:00] grow, you know, like when you get an answer that's like super basic and surface level, it's like, I want to become better at.

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.

Yeah. So, dear listener, I think the, the secret here is start by getting super clear on your values and your values [00:28:00] should be like, you know, our values, truth, simplicity, growth, they're kind of generic, right? I mean, who doesn't believe in truth? Well, but the thing is, dear listener. All of us fucking lie all the time, you know, does my butt look big in this dress, you know, do you like my new haircut?

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.

So, yeah. And often the truth is uncomfortable and we were in just normal, polite, social convention in normal company. A lot of the time we don't say the [00:29:00] truth. Like we use euphemisms for things like words that soften. Like we say someone passed away instead of they died. Yeah. Or we say, you know, uh, collateral damage instead of like we killed innocent people.

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.

And you know, like, I don't like the way you teach, but we, we don't, we don't say that. It's a skill to say it in a way that's actually useful to the person as well. Right. And in a way that's not, in a way that's kind and loving and not mean, but also not sugar coated. Yeah. So I don't want to have necessarily a big conversation, go down the rabbit hole of what You know, [00:30:00] our value of truth is because that could be a whole nother episode, but I think, you know, dear listener for us, I think that the takeaway for you here is that as we've really worked hard to embody that value right across the company and are still working hard on it, it really does start to differentiate us and attract certain people and repel other people because certain people love And we get this a lot now.

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.

Good talk tools. Yeah. It's been great coming on onto your podcast, Raph. Well, welcome, welcome on the [00:31:00] podcast. I'm glad you had a positive experience. Thank you. Okay. Bye. Bye.