We were having leadership challenges.

We had a walkout.

Eight general managers of locations collectively decide not to show up for work.

One day our management team, they got on a plane immediately and flew in to see me in action.

So had to take my own personal and professional career and say, well, how do I want to show up in this moment with my leaders?

I will say it was probably one of the most pivotal moments in my career because I had to balance their needs and who I knew them to be as humans.

Be the person that steps in.

There's better ways to communicate your needs.

There were a lot of lessons learned from it.

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Here's here's Ben.

Hey everybody.

Welcome back to Lee the Team.

Today we have for you Amber Burke, who is the chief operating officer over at Burn Boot Camp.

She's been in the fitness industry for 23 years and as you will hear, incredibly passionate about it.

And she literally just threatened to make me do burpees.

And I'm serious about that.

She's also trained professional and college athletes, including folks from the NFL, players from the Washington commanders, and her certifications, like I can't even mention them all because it take up the entire podcast.

Burn Nation, as they like to call it, is in 43, soon to be 44 states and is an incredible success with over 300 or 361 locations.

And if you're not familiar with Burn Boot Camp, they're for women of all ages seeking empowerment, efficiency and inspiration in their daily lives.

And they deliver unlimited 45 minute counts, complimentary child watch, and one on one focus meetings and personalized nutrition guidance within a supportive community.

Amber, welcome to Lead the team.

Hi Ben, thank you so much.

Excited to be here.

Yeah.

So let's kick this off.

So why Is having a female focused workout business so important?

Well, women typically drive families right from the organization to the scheduling, to the procuring clothing and school supplies and grocery shopping.

And I know a lot of our world right now is starting to cross some of those just lines of gender, lines that we've had for a really long time.

But regardless, moms and women still stay in the forefront of that conversation for the most part.

And when you're constantly doing for others, you're just naturally put at the bottom of the list.

And so if we can offer a really safe space, we have no mirrors in our gyms where women can come and feel as though they are there for them.

All they have to do is show up.

We have certified degree trainers that are on the floor training them for the full 45 minutes.

It's not a screen.

It is an actual human being that is trained to help them understand how to move their bodies in space and time to the best of their ability.

Not just to produce physical results, but to make sure that when they leave there that day, they feel as though they have been empowered to transform their lives, of their families and themselves, to show up better that pre Covid.

We were exclusively women only when we first started the franchise.

Now we are co ed.

We do have men and women that are in our facilities.

We're still running over 85, 90% men.

Some of our gyms are still women only.

The franchise partners felt really strongly about that, which is 100% okay.

But it's really, truly just creating a safe space for women to come and work out in whatever they want to wear that's comfortable for them, where they're not seeing their own reflection reflected back at them.

All they're doing is looking at the weight they're picking up, how long they're moving through exercise, and how they feel when they walk out.

And that's what's most important.

So what's the feedback you've gotten when someone comes in to burn and they've been going to a gym that's co ed with mirrors all over the place and they worry and they walk into your place and it's different?

Yeah, it's interesting.

Everybody still walks in mostly for that physical need.

Right.

I want to lose weight, I want to look better, I want to have less body fat.

I want to reduce some type of potential medical diagnosis.

And that's all relevant and it's wonderful.

But once they step in, every gym has heavy things that you pick up and put down.

Right.

Like every gym has that.

But what you don't have is you don't have the quality of training that we have.

You, we have a national programmer.

So all of our workouts are pushed down through our franchise system.

So if you travel as a member at Burn Boot Camp, you maintain the integrity of your workout every single day.

You're never going to walk into a gym and do back to back workouts that are the same because we are helping to make sure at the national level that all gyms are delivering the same experience.

But when someone walks in and they have that physical goal and they start coming and they start meeting friends, the need sort of starts to change.

Right.

They start to see that there's a different value of just moving their body.

They will have the physical results.

That absolutely happens.

And we know that once we see the scale go down, when we see body fat change, when we see our, when we feel our clothes fitting differently, there's a recognition and an accomplishment of, I'm doing this.

But what comes, what's so cool to watch, what's transformative to watch is the confidence that they gain.

It's the way that they're able to inspire their kids to show up.

It's the, the lateral influence they might have in their circles with their significant other, with their friends, with their family.

And it's, it definitely is that drink the Kool Aid moment.

We call it bleeding blue.

And once you start to see the blood turn from red to blue, it's pretty incredible to watch.

And there's just, there's a glow, there's a light that we see our members start to have.

And that's just probably one of the most rewarding things about it.

Yeah.

And one thing I want to point to the listeners of how you, you, you have the, like the, the weight loss moment that helps motivate people.

But it sounds like you all spend a lot of time talking about the bigger reason why to have a healthy lifestyle.

So you're.

Yes, we're 100 a lifestyle brand.

We have our own activewear line, we have our own nutrition line.

We just launched meals.

I will send you meals to your home that are crafted to be macronutrient based on our workouts.

So around 500 calories, high fiber, high protein, complex carbohydrates, vegetables.

So it's pretty cool that if you walk into Burn Boot Camp, we will meet you in every space you need us to, including on demand.

So if your kids are sick, you can do any one of 12 categories through our Burn on Demand app.

Well, as y'all can tell, there's a lot to unwrap there.

But I really want to shift into Amber's background beyond this, because I could.

I could keep geeking out on this, on how y'all built this incredible brand.

So let's.

Let's dive into your background a little bit more.

Amber.

When's the time that you needed to step up in a challenging situation and lead?

So a couple of years ago, I was working for a different organization, and we were having leadership challenges.

Leadership from the very, very top.

And this brand in particular had over 50 locations in several different states.

And so you can imagine kind of the intermittent attention that we got didn't necessarily fill the gaps of where our.

Some of our general managers in the area needed a certain amount of support and just didn't feel like they were getting it.

And so we had some leadership changes at the top, and there wasn't a lot of communication.

And so we had a walkout.

We had an instance where we had eight general managers of locations collectively decide not to show up for work one day.

And it was messy, and it was a lot of feelings.

And we had.

Our management team flew in.

They got on a plane immediately and flew in.

And I was the last woman standing, if you will.

And I didn't have any idea that this was happening, but once it started happening, I was the point of communication.

So you can imagine kind of being in the middle of all of these people who are my coworkers, they're my colleagues, they're my peers who I've heard share negative experiences or what they perceive to be inadequate leadership.

And then I have a leadership team that's looking at me to kind of translate all of this into something that's coherent and that I can articulate so they can start to formulate a plan.

And it was very, very challenging.

But I will say it was probably one of the most pivotal moments in my career, because I had to balance their needs and who I knew them to be as humans and for the most part, mature professional individuals, where they had just gotten to a point where, you know, kind of mob mentality took over, and they just made a really poor decision.

But then I also had to take my own personal and professional career and say, well, how do I want to show up in this moment with my leaders?

Because these are my leaders that are flying in to see me in action.

And so I am very driven.

And there was an opportunity.

There was an opportunity in my mind to say, if I do this, well, then they'll see these particular skills within me.

They'll see my communication.

They'll see my ability to handle complex problem solving.

They'll see my ability to be able to navigate to very complex kind of relational conversations.

So it was probably one of the craziest 48 to 72 hours I've ever had in my career.

But we worked through it, and the outcome was none of them were invited back to work.

Um, however, we were able to sit and listen.

We actually ended up interviewing most of them who were willing to sit down with us, even though it was not.

We were not going to be able to move past the actions that they took.

What was really inspiring with the organization is they took it as, wow, we've missed here.

If it got to this point, there was some ownership that they did take.

So there were a lot of lessons learned from it.

But in that moment, I think two things for your listeners is if you start to have this mob mentality, or if there's something that just can starts to spiral, be the person that steps in, be the person that says, I care about you enough to know that this is not going to work out well, or there's better ways to communicate your needs.

And if you need validation from others, if you want to have this social proof to say, hey, this is happening.

This isn't just a me thing, we can do that.

But we can do that professionally, we can do it in a different way.

So that was probably one of the craziest situations that I've ever experienced.

That does sound crazy.

And I love how you were able to shift at some point to, hey, this is an opportunity for me.

So many leaders are like, man, I'm getting.

I'm out.

Like, this is.

I'm not going to deal with this.

You tend to lean into situations like that.

It's like, hey, this opportunity for me, and this is a crisis.

That's the whole adage of a crisis represents danger and opportunity.

I don't know if that's really true.

I think JFK has said it with the Chinese characters, but.

Yeah, so this is a crisis, but it's danger and it's opportunity.

And you stepped in there and.

Yeah, and what.

So looking back on that, it sounds like one of the lessons you were talking about.

If you get the idea this kind of thing is going on, to be proactive, try to catch it before it fosters into some sort of mob action.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it came down to kind of the actions of one particular leader that seemed to be the one that was the.

This stopgap between local managers feeling like they weren't being heard.

And then the executive team.

And so in that moment, like reflecting back and talking to, talking to one of the individuals that really kind of led this idea that, hey, they're going to see us when they don't actually see us at work that day.

Right.

And so it's like, even for me, it would have.

I felt like I had probably an opportunity to really see what was happening.

I knew he was frustrated, but could I have seen that differently?

And then could I, I have tried to at least go to this other leader and say, hey, you're going to have a real problem here, or even gone beyond that professionally and said, I'm seeing some things that are, that really are not great, but they have to be factual, they have to be not feeling based.

But if there's numbers always talk.

And especially for remote executive team leaders, they're always looking at spreadsheets to determine the health of the business.

And so you have to push past that if there's something that's actually contextual happening.

And so you have to be able to connect those dots.

Otherwise you're not going to get the attention of those leaders because they're just going to look at a number and be like, well, I can just replace whoever's there.

Because they just are underperforming and that's why they're mad versus really truly giving them an opportunity to see.

Man, there is a leadership issue.

I'm glad you said that, Amber, because in the world we, I mean, and you all have the same challenge.

Sure.

You have so many locations, it's easy to start trying to lead by a spreadsheet.

Yeah.

Sometimes you have to because you don't have the time to go to, I mean, 361 locations, which means 361 people leading those locations and their teams.

And so taking that early situation in your career, bringing it forward to today, how does that leadership approach you're talking about scale to this sort of magnitude?

Yeah.

So a couple of different things that I've learned throughout my career, I've had.

I've really been very blessed to have several different mentors throughout my career.

But, you know, there's also books and gosh, there's so much information.

I was actually joking with someone last week.

If you actually, like, read and listen to all the podcasts on LinkedIn that you felt like you were supposed to, I don't know when you would do anything else.

But what's your job?

I listen to podcasts.

I listen to podcasts to get better at doing my job.

But a couple things for me.

So one, I love Jocko Willineck.

I think his books have been really inspirational for me.

And I am high logic.

And so the tactical and the strategic kind of thinking, complex problem solving, but ultimately extreme ownership.

I was an athlete as I was growing up.

It's critically important.

That's how my brain works.

That's what I'm aligned to.

I think it's why I lean into those dangerous kind of situations.

But when you think of extreme ownership, you do truly have to take that for what it is and in good degree.

And then Built to last.

Jim Collins in Built to Last also identified like 12 to 13 different characteristics of these.

Of these companies that survived different traumatic kind of events as they were operating.

And one of them always resonates with me that one of my mentors used to quote all the time and the people working in these, in these companies that were so successful, it was non binary.

They were either in it and they loved it and they would die for it and they bled blue or they didn't.

And that.

And even if they didn't, that's okay.

We don't have.

Your tenure doesn't necessarily dictate your worth.

I think your tenure is what it's meant to do to grow you to the place where you either continue to evolve within or you evolve without.

And either way it's fine.

But knowing when that moment comes is really, really important.

Otherwise, if you hang on too long, it can be detrimental to either you or the business.

But from taking extreme ownership and understanding that being bought in 100% to what it is that you're doing, those two things have always resonated with me.

And then recently one of my peers here at Burn Boot Camp, she always talks about the difference between being nice and kind.

And I could be nice to you all day long and give you false hope, false information, false encouragement, and actually put you in a really bad position of performance.

Or I could be kind and I could understand and empathize and give you feedback that's going to be credible and candid to help you move forward.

You may not like it and it may be hard and it may not feel good, but it's kind in the way that I am understanding of where you want to go and where you want to be as an individual and what I need for the business.

And I can marry those two things up.

So when you talk about leading from numbers in a spreadsheet, there's context that's always underneath that.

And as a leader, I think it's really important to be able to one, I'm going to take extreme ownership of those numbers.

But I also understand that the numbers are on that sheet because someone.

There's a human being that's driving it.

And behind that human being is true emotion and feeling and need.

And so if I can connect all of those things together and really truly understand if they want it.

Because if they don't want it, I can't want it for them enough to make them do it.

Yes.

Because if you have kids, that's also true.

Well, thinking about like you mentioned Jocko and I like Jocko too.

But what I really like are his children's books.

Have you.

Yes, they are.

You read Way of the Warrior Kid?

I have, I have, I have a little.

I have a son and so we've, we've read that to him.

But you know, I think it's interesting.

I read, I read Dichotomy of Leadership and Extreme Ownership backwards because I don't know why I ended up doing that, but I did and I'm glad that I did.

Because reading Extreme Ownership, man, you can dive into that and if you stop there you can get real sideways.

But understanding that that chapter on Dichotomy of leadership and truly knowing when to flex in between two of those and then that underlying message of extreme ownership at the end of the day balanced that message out a little bit.

So when I recommend those books to people I'm not, I actually tell them read it backwards.

That's interesting.

I can see that.

Yeah, Extreme Ownership is pretty hardcore book.

It is.

And if you stop there, cool.

But yeah, those are my children's stories.

Yeah, they are not.

I'm thankful he wrote the Way that I have a 13 year old daughter and we read, we've read the.

I think they're just two Way of the Warrior Kids.

If I'm wrong.

Is there a third one?

There's a two.

One is like I'm not sure we'll have to kids getting physical bullied.

In the first one it's more like mental.

The kid grows up and he's kind of getting mental.

Like the mental side.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, beautiful books.

But yeah, I like your approach and I can really see how it translates so well to just like fitness training and being learning to be encouraging to people who are on their fitness journey and their wellness journey.

But also not just blowing smoke in a way that's just because eventually they figured out that you weren't being straight with them and they'll just quit.

Quit doing It.

And you seem like you really play the long game in fitness and wellness and leadership.

Yeah, I didn't always.

I definitely messed it up early in my career because I went from.

I was an athlete myself, went straight into training athletes and that.

It's a different mentality.

And so at one point, talk about that.

So you're like NFL professional athletes, and now you're into more.

I don't know, you call people like me general population.

I'm the general population.

It's also good to be here.

Happy to be here.

Hey, listen, I'm general population, too.

What do you.

How do you approach training and wellness from those two different populations that you work with?

Because you got to motivate them, help them stay the path, help them face adversity in their journey.

Yeah, absolutely.

Having been an athlete in that level of mentality and then training professional athletes and just training athletes in general who have this.

This generative drive.

Huberman talks about this a lot.

This.

This generative drive that naturally exists within you.

And so when you see that and you connect with that, it's.

It's easy to train those people.

You just gotta make sure that the biomechanics and the physiology matches whatever it is their.

Their goals are.

But when you transition.

When I transitioned from athletes to general population, I did not take the time to really consider that someone's coming to me.

Not in this space of drive, goal achievement, results, consistency, collaboration.

They're just happy to be in the gym, that they made it.

They might have some throw up on their shirt and they forgot one of their shoes and whatever.

I didn't.

I didn't consider that at first.

And so I struggled.

I had.

And the turning point for me was I had a member.

One of my clients wrote a letter to my boss and said I was mean and that she didn't want to nice or kind.

That, yeah, she didn't want to train with me anymore.

But, you know, in my.

What was it like?

You were just, like.

Were you just, like, screaming at them or were you just like.

I just.

I have high expectations for people.

Yeah.

And I wanted her to show up.

I wanted her to show up on time.

I wanted her to have a right attitude and do what I was asking her to do.

And that doesn't, on the surface, feel like that's the wrong thing.

But the empathy that I didn't necessarily consider between the difference between a working mom with kids and family and messiness of life and an athlete who has almost a singular point of focus and has all the time in the world to devote to their craft.

Those are two very, very different universes.

And so when I had that experience with her, it was a great moment for me to understand that there's different needs.

And so I had to really change my mindset, my mentality.

I still came with the same fire and intensity because that's what you're paying me to do.

If you had the ability internally to do this for yourself, you would go do it for yourself.

So I understood the concept of I'm paying for this service from you.

But if I want it more than they want it, or if I'm presenting it in a way that is, is that they can't align with, then they're not going to do it anyway.

So now I'm wasting my time.

They're wasting their time.

So that transition, and now even at Burn, our master programmer, Matt Morris, he's our VP of fitness.

You know, I love the way that he programs.

He's constantly, he's a life learner and he's constantly understanding what is our programming, what does it look like and how does it show up on the floating floor.

But what I love that he does.

So I have rheumatoid arthritis, and sometimes when I have flare ups, I can't do the prescribed workout.

And it mentally makes me want to lose my mind.

And so.

But I know as long as I go upstairs to camp, there's three different modes of each exercise that I can choose to do that's going to still make me feel like I'm part of the community and that I'm not taking away from my workout.

I'm still there, getting, optimizing what's going to be best for me.

And so that's really what I appreciate about the way that we're able to show up for every single member that steps on our floor.

Well, I love that.

And the way you present it, it sounds like it's way harder to train the general population than professional athletes, which I think most people think would be the opposite.

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I'm curious.

So you talked about your rheumatoid arthritis.

What's it like being a hardcore athlete, being COO and dealing with that?

I feel the most like myself when I'm training.

And so if I can work with my rheumatologist, and as long as my medicine is working correctly and my body's performing, then I will push it to the limits.

And.

But that's.

That's fun.

That's.

For me, that's fun.

I enjoy it.

I love it.

I actually ran my fastest form all time this morning, and I just thought, I'm still.

I'm still pring.

I'm still at 45.

I'm still kicking those things, and that's what keeps me going.

That's what makes me keep showing up.

It's not the same for everybody, and I don't expect it to be.

But if I can do that, then I carry that into my day.

I can carry that into the way that I speak to franchise partners and the way that I speak to my team.

You know, what motivates them?

How.

How are they pring in life where it still transcends across everything that they're doing, whether they're influencing their kids or it just helps with mental clarity, or it just gives them some endurance to.

We work long, hard days.

We do tons of events.

We're constantly performing and doing different things for our franchise partners.

And it.

We're.

We're kind of a lot.

So.

Yeah, that's a good question.

Think about how are we all setting our.

Hitting our personal PRs.

And y'all.

Some people are like, what is a PR?

Don't explain that.

Personal record.

A personal record, something that you've been maybe doing over and over again, but you do it the best in this particular moment, on this day, and you celebrate it.

Take a moment to just go, dang, that was great.

I did that.

I just wish you would have hit your PR right after our interview, and then we could say it was because of the interview, but maybe it was yours.

It was your excitement level about the interview.

Future.

Richard.

Personal pr.

Well, congratulations on that.

Now, in our research, you ran across the fact that you had a very interesting family life growing up.

I did.

And your parents were involved in business in different ways.

Share with us a little bit about what it was like growing up with them and what you learned along the way and how it informs your leadership.

Sure.

My dad is a golf pro, so PJ Professional at a.

At a.

At a club.

So he's built a couple of golf courses, and then he was the PGA pro at the.

At the Club.

He's retired now, but they're just becoming a professional in anything to that degree is super inspiring.

And I'm dad's girl all the way.

He constantly just shows up, and I just love it.

But my mom also owned a dance store, so I started as a gymnast and a dancer.

And before the Internet and all the stuff that we have now, there were actually brick and mortar stores that you had to go in and shop in.

And so we only had one dance store in our town, and it was going to close, and she thought, I can't let that happen, so she bought it.

So she became an entrepreneur.

She opened three locations in our town.

But just seeing that.

And she was a.

So my parents were divorced.

She was a single mom, so she was doing that entrepreneur with my grandmother.

Then my dad was a golf pro, remarried.

My stepmom, who was the head of perioperative services at the hospital, well, they decided they weren't busy enough with three kids and a blended family and all these things, so they started a catering business.

And then they decided we're going to move into this Victorian home in the oldest town in Tennessee and open a bed and breakfast and still keep our jobs also.

And you know what?

We might as well throw a restaurant in there, too.

So growing up, I had this incredible.

And by the way, then, by that time, I played soccer as travel.

Soccer, travel, dance, travel, gymnastics.

Whoa.

And then I had brothers who were golfers and baseball players.

And so it was like, oh, my gosh, the swirl of all of that.

But I thrived in it, and I loved it, and we all loved it, and we were going in a million different directions all the time, but it just.

It taught me balance.

It taught me work ethic, it taught me, don't be afraid, be willing, just be courageous.

Just be willing, just be vulnerable.

Just.

Just be all the things that you think you can.

And if you fail, so what.

But what if you succeed?

And so all of those just culminated into this.

Just the drive that I was kind of talking about before to step in.

And that translated in my career.

I started as a strength conditioning coach, working with athletes, but very quickly, I took on operations, I took on sales, I took on facility management, I took on group fitness, I took on personal training, I took on personal training, sales, I took on nutrition, I took on.

Because it just.

There's this need for me to just understand how does all this work together and what's going to be.

How can I optimize my own performance?

And that's just kind of what I saw in my parents and in my family.

Wow.

So those are a lot of businesses and jobs.

They had jobs and business.

Were they.

How successful were they able to maintain all this, or was it.

Yeah, so my dad ended up retiring kind of in my latter high school years.

So we could do.

Because we had the bed and breakfast in the restaurant.

And like I said, it was in Jonesboro, Tennessee, which is the oldest town in Tennessee.

And so we have Jonesboro days, we have storytelling festival.

There's apple pick.

Like, there's all kinds of things.

And so he very quickly realized that we were sold out in the.

In the bed and breakfast almost every single weekend.

The restaurant was open for lunch most days.

And so it was like, he's an amazing cook also.

He just.

He, like, does everything.

What is the world.

Okay.

He's a good dude, but, yeah, I mean, super successful.

My stepmom retired from the hospital after.

I hope I don't get this wrong, like, 35 years, like an.

Like a ridiculously long time with an incredible career, and they balanced it together.

And then my mom, like I said, she opened the three dance stores, gymnastics stores, and as E commerce kind of started happening, she was able to learn and kind of tap into that, and she sold those stores and that was profitable for her.

And so.

Wow.

Okay, well, successful.

That sounds like.

Yeah, they.

They hit their PRs at the right time.

Yes, they had their PRs.

Well, so.

Well, okay.

One of these about working out is I'm gonna tie this into your leadership and your style here is.

Okay, people say, like, working out is basically breaking down your body.

Right.

And you have to rest.

Rest to grow, to revitalize.

I don't hear a lot of resting in your parents stories or your story.

Not to say there's not, but how do you think about that as a leader with all these locations, all these activities that you're involved in for personal re.

I guess, replenishing your own energy and growth.

Yeah.

Oh, I don't.

Is the answer.

We finally got that question.

I'm a terrible liar, so I'm just gonna tell you the truth.

You asked me a direct question.

I don't do that well, to be honest.

And I will say, as a leader, there's a difference between vulnerability and transparency.

And sometimes people need their leaders to be vulnerable.

And vulnerability means that I'm going to share with you something that I need you to carry part of it.

Like, you're gonna.

You're gonna put the mantle on your shoulders with me, and we're gonna carry it together.

That's.

That's vulnerability.

I'm sharing with you something that I'm struggling with.

Transparency is I'm just sharing information with you.

I'm just being clear and transparent.

And this is the thing that happened and how it happened or what happened or why it happened.

But I'm not necessarily exposing any sort of need or emotion or ask that brings you into the situation with me.

And as leaders, I think sometimes we do a pretty good job of being transparent.

Not always, but we do a pretty good job of being transparent.

But there's a level of vulnerability that I have absolutely struggled with that I think has kept me disconnected from some of my team members that need to see that I do have feelings, that I can be emotional, that on the back end I can.

I can be empathetic, that doesn't feel transactional or inauthentic.

I can care about you.

But if it doesn't present in a way, or if I'm never vulnerable, I'm only ever transparent, then there's not a connection that makes you have that, that non binary bleed blue.

I'm in it to win it.

Amber's my person.

She's my leader.

Because we've shared some things.

There's a degree of that when you get to a certain level in leadership that with.

With certain people and team members.

I'm not saying you need to do this with your entire team, but if you truly want to have some of the fundamental kind of cornerstone people on your team.

I have found that there are moments where I have to be vulnerable, and that's tough for me because I don't like to slow down.

I just want to keep driving.

I'm going to keep looking at that spreadsheet, and if we're underperforming, I'm going to talk to you about it.

But I can't talk to you about it and even be kind if I've never maybe shared a vulnerable moment with you, because otherwise it's just going to be transactional and transparent.

Wow.

We were being vulnerable right now.

So what's.

So what's your advice to leaders who are in the same boat?

Like, they don't do vulnerability that often in front of people.

And honestly, if you're running a fitness business, people have high expectations because you're supposed to be the most fit, the most hardcore.

Don't you dare touch that margarita at the company party.

Have the chips and salsa too.

Okay?

Okay.

All right.

Burns a little different.

But what.

So what.

What's your message to them if they don't I guess.

Or you think of it as, what have you found useful?

And you did a nice job of saying, hey, there are benefits to being vulnerable to key members of your team.

How do you do that?

Oh, I mean, as a leader to other leaders or leaders to.

Even my downline, it's example.

And I can't tell someone to go do something.

I can inspire them to do it, but I can't make them or tell them to go do it.

So I can share a story that's real and an experience that's real to say this happened, or I can do it in front of them or I can walk with them through it.

I've had lots of conversations where I've had to mediate, where people just, they're just not on the same page.

They can't communicate.

They're both very frustrated.

So it's almost you're setting up an opportunity for each of them to be vulnerable.

It's like if you're having a conflict, you have to have this shared experience into solution and somebody's going to have to give somewhere.

And maybe this person giving and being a little vulnerable and saying, not only did when you did this transparently, this is how this is what happened, but it's also, this is how it made me feel.

And I responded this way because of it.

And I probably could have responded differently if I felt like you and I could talk in this way or that you even cared about me or that there was any sort of concern around how it made me feel, and then vice versa.

So I think with leaders, especially as you are developing your teams underneath you, you have to be in a position to where you are able to either foster and cultivate those types of conversations or you personally, you have to be willing to step into that just even a few times.

Because when you're, when you're two and you've got the Heisman handout, too often what's.

What might happen is that you'll have your team members going to other leaders, and then that leads to inconsistent communication.

It leads to cascading messages that don't reach you that leaves you feeling out of the loop as a leader, which makes you show up a little bit differently in a meeting, perhaps.

And this is all stuff that I've experienced.

Even last week, I was sitting in a meeting and I didn't know something, and I was like, I should know that and someone else knew it because there was an opportunity for them to share.

And then so I have to go, did I not provide that opportunity?

Did they not Trust me to share that.

Was.

I just.

Was it just circumstance?

I just happened to be traveling last week and I just didn't hear it.

Like, yeah, but you have to be able to assess those situations, and especially if they're recurring, I would say one offs, not a huge deal, but you gotta be.

You have to be willing to look and say, is this the case of threes?

Right.

My peer that talks to me about nice and kind, she has this rule of threes.

If it happens three times, something's going on.

And so if it's happening, then you have to be at least aware of it to go address it.

A lot of good stuff in there.

But what I hear the most is like, hey, extreme ownership.

Going back to that, you take ownership of that.

A lot of leaders will hear it and be like, well, they should have told me what's wrong with them.

If they.

If they're ever there and they have a concern, they should come tell me.

And you're like, no, no, I should know.

I should have that level of trust.

We should have that kind of relationship, that kind of organization.

What do we need to do?

And that is not always a fun thought to have.

It's not.

I will say two things.

I.

At one point.

At one point, people called me Amber the Hammer, which I hate it.

It didn't feel good.

I was like.

They're like.

Because I said, why do you.

That's a cool name, though.

But they're like, you're scary and you drive results.

And I'm like, okay, I don't love that.

Can we.

Can we stop this?

Wait, what is it now, though?

I don't know.

I'd have to go ask.

Hopefully it's a good one.

But.

Yeah.

And then the other thing is just like I said, just making sure that the extreme ownership piece, you can't go too far with it because you also.

Others have to be accountable.

But there is an ownership of knowing that you are the leader, you are the leader.

It's not up to them.

You have to lead them.

You have to come to them.

And if you aren't that safe space and if you haven't created trust.

And I'm not talking about even liking people.

You know, when I played sports, I didn't like everybody on my team, but I had.

We had to trust each other enough to win.

And so there's a difference.

That's a great.

That's a great point we have.

And by the way, this is like, for the world, right?

We have to learn to work with people.

We don't like.

And we have to learn how to win with people we don't like.

And we have to learn to even, dare I say, as you said, trust people you don't like.

And that is like blasphemy to some people.

But y'all, that's the way we only way the humans have survived for this long because we figured that way out.

Now we don't have much time left, but I gotta ask you some like workout related stuff because.

Okay, ask.

Not like we got here with that about that.

So leaders like myself on the road traveling one, we don't have a lot of time to work out.

We're often hotels that have mediocre gyms.

We're often tired.

Right.

Time zone differences.

Also like you wake up and the food, the hotel's not great.

It's not there.

You got to get to your appointment early.

So nutrition, working out, everything can easily get compromised when you're doing this stuff.

Yeah.

How do you.

What are you thinking about?

Like strategies for executives who are tired but they want to eat well and they even want to exercise.

So when they go back come.

I tell people I want to come back, I want to go on a business trip and I actually want to come back healthier and refreshed than what I left.

And people say it's not possible.

It is possible.

It is possible.

I'll give you.

Okay, I'll give you a strategy.

And you got to do things.

You have to decide what are your non negotiables and then you have to understand your triggers.

So non negotiable for me is that I have to be active.

I have to do something.

So if the gym is terrible, then I need to find a way to.

Is it safe enough to run outdoors?

Is there something I can do?

I have to be active.

And even if the gym is terrible, if it's a non negotiable and that's the only thing that you have, you better go to the gym.

And other non negotiables are the eating right.

Right.

If you know, eating rights are non negotiable.

Planes are a big deal for me.

I fly a lot and so I always have a protein source.

Whether I put my protein powder in my shaker and it's dry and then I get into the airport and I buy the water and I put it in, then I have my protein.

Okay.

So you're taking the.

Okay, that makes sense because you can't.

Take your liquids in a shaker.

Right.

That's really easy.

And if you're, if your Basic goal is a hundred grams of protein a day.

I can get 60 in two scoops.

So it's like, that's kind of a non negotiable plus it's easy.

I typically always have some kind of mixed nut variety, almonds, cashews, walnuts, things like that.

So it's my healthy fat.

Sometimes it has dried food in it, dried fruit.

So that's my carbohydrate, a little bit of energy and protein.

So as long as I've got my macronutrients, especially on planes, that I'm less likely in the airport to, to go to Auntie Ann's or grab the, what's the, what do you call it?

Sinnabon.

Oh my gosh.

I'm always so also low key.

I'm always very proud of people that are willing to just eat that stuff because I'm like, dang, you don't even care.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like you imagine like you're on a business trip with your team.

Smells so good.

Yeah, like you're on a business trip with your team and you're like, oh, I gotta go to bathroom, I'll be right back.

Yeah, show up and you're just like chowing down on a big Cinnabon.

They would probably admit me, they would think something was very wrong with me.

So second, non negotiable would be like food and then same thing like travel with, with some of the snacks that are going to help you maybe not make poor choices.

But then if you're on a business trip, you're also there for other people.

You're entertaining, you're going and eating good food.

Like there has to be balance in life.

I am not a proponent of just being a total stick in the mud.

So but if movement for me, I have to work out and I can mitigate later what I know to be poor food choices later, then that helps me mentally figure out the balance.

And then the other thing are the triggers.

So alcohol is a huge trigger to making really poor choices.

I don't know if your listeners know that.

Maybe I just blew their minds with that statement.

You mean like drinking like six beers?

You're not sort of.

Not at all.

Okay.

Any sort of alcohol metabolism metabolizes in your system.

Right.

And it could trigger just the need to want to have fattier foods, more high carbohydrate foods.

Like physiologically it actually literally triggers some of these, some of these needs.

And so it's like if you know that, then choose something that's less likely, like vodka and a soda or Something like that.

No, you have a drink, don't drink the sweet drinks.

Don't kind of go down that direction.

But if you know that one or two is your limit or it's going to impede your getting up and going and working out the next morning or whenever it's convenient for you, just understand, like set yourself.

Have the conversation with yourself.

Have a conversation with yourself.

All right.

Okay.

So now we're down the road of drinking.

You said vodka soda.

Is that.

That's my choice.

Is that the drink of high performance athletes that are going to have.

I will not.

I.

Listen, I'm not a doctor.

I'm not recommending this in any way.

That's typically what I'll stick to.

Okay.

Are.

Is there a better one than that to health wise or like if, like as far as you know, that might be the best.

Literally last week there was a study that came out and I don't know how real it is.

I haven't fact checked it.

Biolane.

Don't listen to this podcast and be like, Amber doesn't know what she's talking about.

I love him by the way.

He's amazing about alcohol in any con, in any amount, being a carcinogen and so need to do more research on that.

But alcohol in general is not necessarily something that I recommend doing.

I just know for those of us that travel and we're typically traveling for a conference, a seminar, an event, and it's all there and it's all happening.

There's a huge sober movement right now.

If you're part of that, kudos to you.

Congratulations.

Alcohol in general never makes you feel better.

I'll just put it out there.

But if you need balance and if that's part of what you're even expected to do, perhaps then just understand it can be moderate.

It can be.

But it can also be a trigger and maybe set you up for failure kind of later.

So.

Yeah.

And yeah, athletic greens and brands like that are really taking the.

The beer world by storm on that front too.

And that.

Yeah.

But I have heard vodka soda.

If you're gonna have a cocktail.

I've also heard tequila.

Tequila is pretty clean because it's.

It has an organic ish or it has.

It's.

It's less processed or.

I don't know.

Who knows?

I don't know.

I do not claim to be an alcohol expert.

I.

So wine, if you put it.

If you're having a showdown at a conference dinner between vodka soda and wine.

Yeah.

Who wins health wise?

Because you know, they're Neither one is good for you, per se.

Yeah.

But you're going to.

I don't choose one.

I don't know.

For me, I'm choosing the vodka because I know alcohol or wine.

My body does not like wine.

It immediately makes me not feel good.

And so for me personally, I'm going to stick to the.

Okay, so.

So messages.

Know what works for you based on your experiences, how you respond.

Absolutely.

I feel like we digressed.

We started off very high.

Now we're just talking about drinking.

Now we're getting into real extreme ownership.

Yes.

Of what we're drinking.

Of our alcoholic.

Yeah.

No.

Well.

And that was.

This is very helpful thing for our listeners because.

Yeah, not all of them drink.

A portion of them do.

And in business meeting settings, at least in the past, that's kind of been part of the thing.

Expectation.

And I'll just to remember, though, one of the words that you didn't say that came to mind and thinking.

It's like, it's a good reminder to me.

But I'm going to travel.

I.

I'm going to be rewarded for being proactive and planning my food, planning how I'm going to approach my day versus just running into Cinnabon, that, that.

That pretzels place.

I mean, the smells out of there.

It all smells amazing.

And if you have not taken your protein powder or had your nuts with you, it's harder to say no to that.

It is so hard.

No judgment to anybody that does any of that, by the way.

Okay.

We're not here to judge.

That is anti what your company's about, and I.

They don't have mirrors, y'all.

No, Amber will not.

If you see Amber, she will not drop the hammer.

I will not.

But say hi to her.

Amber, this has been so much fun.

Yeah, she's nice person.

Well, what's your parting thought for our listeners today?

You know, I think I'm just.

It's just.

Just be willing.

I did a podcast, a Burn Bootcamp podcast, a couple of months ago with my CEO Morgan Klein, and she asked me, if your daughter was here today, right now, what would you tell?

And she's 15 and she knows all the things.

And I said, you know, be vulnerable, Just be vulnerable.

Just be willing, just be courageous, just be brave.

Just.

Just be in the moments, and you're going to either succeed, you're going to fail, but you're always going to learn.

And so I think for any of us out there is it's just be willing, just be courageous, just be vulnerable.

You know, Ariel, you heard it right from Amber Burke today, who as you've heard too, a lot of really cool leadership experience and a lot of good stuff to go to.

Apply Amber, thanks for coming on and lead the team.

Thanks Ben.

I appreciate it.

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