[3:12] Why calendar management is your secret weapon

[7:03] Effective goal-setting for gym owners

[10:08] Coaching your team vs. doing the work yourself

[12:43] The power of financial literacy and strategy

[16:01] Building sustainable systems and processes

[00:00:00] Nick Reyes: So this is the one hour a week hack that all gym owners can make to change their business. Welcome to the PushPress Podcast, 

[00:00:07] Dan Uyemura: where gym owners learn to dodge bad advice, crush their competition, and actually make money doing what they love. Let's get after it spinning up directly into, uh, what does working on your business really look like? What do you do with your time if you're leveraging it back? And I think one of the most interesting things about this is like everything you do in business to make an improvement creates a downstream potential problem.

[00:00:45] Dan Uyemura: And you've always gotta be aware of that. 'cause as that problem starts to surface, you gotta be ready to attack that one, right? And what happens is if you find a really good assistant and they're buying, they're taking stuff off your plate. If you just start foam rolling with your members and talking to them about their girlfriends and boyfriends, that's stupid.

[00:01:00] Dan Uyemura: Not, not a good use of your time. So that's what we're kind of talking about now is like, what, what should you be doing? 

[00:01:05] Nick Reyes: Yeah, I mean, if you can manage to carve out, you know, I'll just toss out a, a number here. I'll say like six hours of extra time every week. Uh, where are we spending that time? And if you're a busy entrepreneur, I'm sure some of that's going back to your personal life.

[00:01:22] Nick Reyes: You know, maybe you actually want to go and sit down and have dinner with your family because I think that's pretty freaking important. Um, maybe you don't have a family and you just need to go meditate. Um, you know, or maybe you spend four of those six out networking. Right? So that's, that's ultimately what we, what we want to dive into is like, what does that look like?

[00:01:43] Nick Reyes: What does that feel like? Uh, what does it look like and feel like for us, uh, day to day when, when we're not spending brain cycles on things that, you know, 'cause I think maybe that's the other part we can dive into here is like, you may save six hours a week of actual time typing on a keyboard. How much time are you spending up here?

[00:02:04] Nick Reyes: Not thinking about something else. Even while you're driving. I'm not thinking about responding to an email. Yeah. I'm downloading information from a podcast that I'm listening to while I drive or something. 

[00:02:13] Dan Uyemura: That's interesting. It's like invisible time. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I call forest time. And this, this conversation's come up recently 'cause I've been talking to a bunch of gym owners, but, uh, I think a lot of us, and this is, this to me, is a more concrete version of working on your business and in your business.

[00:02:27] Dan Uyemura: I think, um, too many people, not even gym owners, probably you and me even. Spend a lot of time very close to the problem in the trees time, and you need to carve time to be in the forest or to look at the forest, right, forest and the trees. And um, when that analogy was explained to me about a year or two ago, it made me realize why things like golfing or meditation is important because it, it allows you to completely separate from all of the things you're doing in the business.

[00:02:55] Dan Uyemura: Do something that. This is why to me, like CrossFit or like high intensity functional fitness does not serve me from a business standpoint, but long distance running does. Yeah. Because it gives me an hour where I can just be in my head and get fitness. Right. So I think that's, um, that is an important distinction to make and somebody to think about is like that you're buying back time.

[00:03:15] Dan Uyemura: Are you spending more time, as much time in the business still? Which might be okay, depending on what stage you're at or can you carve some forest time. 

[00:03:22] Nick Reyes: Right, right. No, absolutely. Let's, uh, let's dive into these. So I think if we're talking about what working on your business really looks like, the first place that I would start is your calendar.

[00:03:36] Nick Reyes: Like, your calendar is your truth. Uh, it doesn't lie if, if it's all blank, meaning you don't live by it. You're probably getting pulled into whatever your business is chucking at you on a regular basis. 

[00:03:53] Dan Uyemura: Hey, let's do something right now. Ooh, pull up Monday. Let's just see mine. Mine is color coded nuts, so it's gonna look crazy.

[00:04:00] Dan Uyemura: Okay. But let's see if the calendar can, or the, uh, camera can see this. 

[00:04:06] Nick Reyes: Oh, wait, I don't even use the same version of calendar as you, but. 

[00:04:10] Dan Uyemura: What is that? Apple calendar? Apple calendar. Oh yeah. They don't have like an agenda view at least. Uh, they probably do, but yeah, you can see here pretty clearly. And I actually have some automations that block off my personal calendar for my work calendar.

[00:04:21] Dan Uyemura: That's why there's some double ups. But like my time is blocked super precisely. And, um, I actually group or Laurie group blocks things that make sense together. Oh, 

[00:04:33] Nick Reyes: there we 

[00:04:34] Dan Uyemura: go. How about that? There you go. So you can see like living, living by the calendar. Nick has time just to grab a quick sandwich.

[00:04:41] Dan Uyemura: Somewhere in there, 

[00:04:42] Nick Reyes: there's a, there's a really thin line that says lunch. 

[00:04:47] Dan Uyemura: Yeah. So to Nick's point, if you're not using a calendar manager time, it's like you're probably missing meetings. You're probably forgetting to prep for things. You don't even know what's coming up. Uh, like we mentioned in the last episode, I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow, but at 9:00 AM when I meet with my assistant every day, I know what I'm doing today.

[00:05:01] Dan Uyemura: For the whole day. 

[00:05:03] Nick Reyes: I, I've had this saying like, if you don't control it, it controls you. Mm-hmm. So if your calendar's a wide open blank, wild, wild west, I guarantee you it is pulling you in whatever direction the world wants you to go and therefore you're, you cannot be intentful with what you want to do with your time to put the most impact you can on the world.

[00:05:22] Dan Uyemura: Can I throw like a little anecdote into here? That might be a whole episode. Always. There is a concept that whatever space you give a task, you will fill it. I forgot what the actual, there's a name for it. So one thing I try to do is intentionally, and I think you mentioned this in last episode, is like audit every now and then and like, do I really need 30 minutes for that meeting?

[00:05:43] Dan Uyemura: Can we do it in 15 because we're gonna spend 15 minutes talking about the weather. You know, like it's just gonna happen. Mm-hmm. So I think one thing you can do is like start to look at your calendar and, and really ask yourself hard. Like, do I need an hour for that or can I do it in 30? 

[00:05:55] Nick Reyes: Yep. Yep. Uh, a funny kind of, uh, parallel to that.

[00:06:01] Nick Reyes: What is, uh, what I noticed Pat doing at Kac that him and I had discussion about was right after he got done coaching a class, he would have a meeting booked. So he was really good at starting to block off all of his time and he didn't build in transition time, any transition time between them and specifically what he forgot or what, what, where the first miss was, is that.

[00:06:24] Nick Reyes: Rubbing elbows with your members at the end of a class is important to retention. It's important to 

[00:06:31] Dan Uyemura: peak end, peak end theory. 

[00:06:33] Nick Reyes: Yep. And so there was, there was two ways that you could handle that or three ways. Uh, two of them are wrong. One way is you stack meetings, meaning you don't get time to rub elbows, elbows with your members.

[00:06:45] Nick Reyes: Or 

[00:06:46] Dan Uyemura: prepare. 

[00:06:46] Nick Reyes: Right. Or you don't put any meeting afterwards, now you waste 40 minutes. 'cause members will hang out and talk and go on a cool down walk and everything else and you just burn through 40 minutes. Instead, intentionally put a 15 minute, you know, do not schedule post-class meeting. You know, hang out with member time and then do that for 15 minutes and then move on to whatever's next.

[00:07:11] Nick Reyes: Yeah. Right. So that's the right out of the three ways. 

[00:07:14] Dan Uyemura: Yep. Yep. 

[00:07:16] Nick Reyes: Uh, okay, so next one. Um, I'll call this one, you know, uncomfortable focus. And so if you are trying to go in too many directions at once, you are not possibly going to move the needle on a specific area. And so what you really want to do is take a piece of that time and go.

[00:07:37] Nick Reyes: This is what I'm doing, this is when I'm doing it, and be again, live by it. Don't, don't just scatterbrain the, the six hours into a bunch of random places. So the example that I would use here would be like, um, I spent a good amount of time studying like the a, a marketing funnel. And so all my spare time was like blocked for marketing study, marketing study, marketing study.

[00:08:01] Nick Reyes: So almost save that time to put it into almost like a school type of effort. Mm-hmm. I don't know if you do any of that with any of your time that you have. 

[00:08:08] Dan Uyemura: Oh, absolutely. Like, um, the, the, the mindset I always go back to is the concept of like, boiling an ocean or boiling a pot of water. Like you only have so much energy and whatever you deploy it to, it's either gonna be, you know, the bigger the thing is in terms of scope or, um, you know, what you're trying to achieve, the less energy you're gonna be able to put into any piece of it.

[00:08:31] Dan Uyemura: So it's, um, you know, it's like you're gonna boil a pot of water faster, so just pour yourself, pots of water and get those things done, done, done, and then move on. Just try to make sure like you. This is where the forest time's important because like your goal might to be to boil the ocean, but you're gonna do it one pot at a time.

[00:08:47] Dan Uyemura: But you've gotta be like, am I getting the right pot of water every time that gets me to the direction I want to go? Yep. You know? Yep. Otherwise you're just boiling like things in all directions and it's not giving you the direction now you want. 

[00:08:58] Nick Reyes: Right. So like the, the whole like, you know, if I'm working on my business, it might be I am dialing specifically in our.

[00:09:07] Nick Reyes: Uh, what our sales process is, and I'm gonna take all the time that I've saved and I'm gonna dump it all into this sales thing for the next 30 days. And we're gonna really dial in this sales process that's, I'm gonna, it's gonna be, I'm gonna go into every nook and cranny in every detail with a complete level of discomfort.

[00:09:25] Nick Reyes: I'm gonna do role playing with my sales team, but I'm gonna get deep in this area. 

[00:09:29] Dan Uyemura: Do you notice a really another antidote side topic that's not part of this that I think is very interesting. Without the concept of a growth goal, there is no working on your business. You know what I mean? Like I feel like too many gym owners don't even know where they're trying to get to and they're working on stuff that they don't even know if it, like, how do you know if it's going in the right direction?

[00:09:49] Nick Reyes: How do you know if it moves the needle? 

[00:09:50] Dan Uyemura: Like, why are you working on sales if you don't know I need to improve my, my sales numbers by 18% by December? You know what I mean? Like you've gotta have a goal. Yep. So. Another episode. Another episode. And just something that's interesting that you think about, like you're spending forced time to understand where you want to go, but where you wanna go has to have finite positioning.

[00:10:10] Dan Uyemura: Mm-hmm. I wanna get to this many, this much revenue, I wanna do this much an additional pt. Like there has to be something finite so that you can build the every pot of water you're boiling towards it, 

[00:10:20] Nick Reyes: right? Yeah. Right. Uh, going to the third one, which is the team, if you are working. On your, if you're working in your business, you're coaching the classes.

[00:10:31] Nick Reyes: If you're working on your business, you are coaching the team that's coaching the classes, 

[00:10:35] Dan Uyemura: coaching the coaches. 

[00:10:36] Nick Reyes: And that'll look a lot of different ways. That'll be taking their classes, that'll be observing their classes, that'll be, uh, communicating with members to get feedback on how the coach did in a specific area of the class.

[00:10:49] Nick Reyes: Not just going up saying, Hey, how did Dan coach you today? But it was like, Hey, how was Dan's, uh, how did he wrap the class? Did you feel good when you left at the end? Yeah, I don't, don't worry about the beginning. I wanna talk about the end, right? Like get deep, precise in the specific area. 

[00:11:04] Dan Uyemura: Yeah. If you really think about it again, the difference between in and on in is just like, it's so in the moment, it's like I'm coaching a class, like you can't get more than one with that on is like our goal as a company is to increase everyone's.

[00:11:18] Dan Uyemura: Strength this month, and I wanna have a customer satisfaction rate of 93%. And I like, you have these things, and then it's like, I'm gonna take a class, I'm gonna write down notes. I'm gonna pay attention to what other customers are seeing, feeling and thinking. I'm gonna interview them. I'm gonna talk to the coach.

[00:11:34] Dan Uyemura: How did you feel about that class? What went right? What went wrong? What do you wanna lean into? What do you wanna work on? How can I help you? Right? Like all of those things are aligned with the fact that you have something you wanna get done. But if you don't have the forest time enough to even know where you want to go, like you're not even gonna think.

[00:11:48] Dan Uyemura: That was just like 20 things I just laid out. That will take all week to do that you're not even thinking about doing. You know, 

[00:11:55] Nick Reyes: this is where, uh, if any of our audiences followed along with Dan's blog, um, I. Which we can link in the show notes. We just changed from, uh, core values to operational tenets.

[00:12:07] Nick Reyes: And the dig deep one is like everything you just said, I'm like, oh yeah, that's digging deep into how can I build this team that can deliver an exceptional level of value, and that's not gonna be done of like, oh, I observed a class and then take some notes and then emailed it to 'em. That's not digging deep 

[00:12:25] Dan Uyemura: at all.

[00:12:26] Dan Uyemura: And the interesting thing is digging deep. You dig where the values are. Right. So if I went to the whole company and said like, all we care about is extracting as much money as we can of our clients, then digging deep is gonna be something very different. Then I wanna build the best product that, you know, maximizes our client's ability to run their their businesses.

[00:12:45] Dan Uyemura: So again, you can set operational tenants, but if you don't know where you want to go and you haven't made that clear to people, digging deep could actually cause problems too. 

[00:12:53] Nick Reyes: Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Uh, I think the next area when we're talking about, you know. What it looks like to work on your businesses.

[00:13:03] Nick Reyes: I'm gonna, I'm gonna just say financial literacy. Mm-hmm. It is. You have to know the ins and outs of, and this goes back to what you've mentioned, like what's your growth goal? How are we getting there? How much cash are you spending? Where is it going? You've got to be able to see the whole picture as a captain of the ship here.

[00:13:22] Dan Uyemura: Yeah. And one of the big things I will always mention, and probably people understand at best point, maybe, maybe some people don't, is. We've been trained to think of our financial picture as the scoreboard, which is revenue members, NPS even. And the reality is those are all lagging indicators or what I'll call, I call scoreboard or, or output metrics.

[00:13:45] Dan Uyemura: And the analogy I make to a lot of people to make it really easy is like basketball or a sport. There's a scoreboard that tells you who won. There's amount of time you have to play, like the, the rules are very clear, but you don't win. You win by putting up points, but you don't put up points by putting up points.

[00:14:01] Dan Uyemura: You know what I mean? Yeah. Like that's the result of doing things. You win by dribbling and passing and finding the open teammate and running plays and turn, you know, stealing the ball, you know, and blah blah. Free throws. So it's like all of the inputs to winning should be where your focus are is, and you have to know what the scoreboard is a result of, to know what.

[00:14:21] Dan Uyemura: The, the plays you run are, and you should spend more of your time focusing on what, what are the plays we're drawing up to allow us to make more baskets than what is the score at the end of the day? 

[00:14:30] Nick Reyes: Right? Yeah. Tallying the score for tally the score's sake, does nothing, 

[00:14:33] Dan Uyemura: doesn't help you at all. 

[00:14:34] Nick Reyes: Uh, when I say financial literacy or maybe financial strategy, it is like more how am I connecting those inputs to the score knowing that we, we have to become better passers if we want a better score.

[00:14:48] Dan Uyemura: Yep. 

[00:14:49] Nick Reyes: Right. Uh, you have to recognize you have a problem with passing. 

[00:14:52] Dan Uyemura: That's, that is the, to me, that's the first unlock is, and, and again, think about it, if a gym member came to your gym and said like, I wanna lose weight, so I'm gonna do lose weight, it doesn't even make sense. Right? Like, to lose weight, you gotta eat, you gotta start eating healthy.

[00:15:07] Dan Uyemura: You gotta understand how you sleep. You've gotta know your, like what we're training for when you come into the gym. Like those are the inputs to losing weight or whatever their goal is. But it's the same thing like. If you want to grow in a certain direction, in a certain way, it's like you break that back down into like, what does that, what do you do?

[00:15:21] Nick Reyes: That's actually super interesting. You're right, because it's like that really is coaching in a nutshell. Yeah. It's, it's when the member, I'm gonna keep going on that example. It's like the member comes to you and says, I'm not losing enough weight, or I've only lost X amount of pounds. Immediately your brain goes through.

[00:15:37] Nick Reyes: What are all of their inputs? It's like, well, they work out, they eat well. Oh, they sleep like crap. There's high stress. Like you, you'll, you'll start 

[00:15:45] Dan Uyemura: asking what inputs are immediately. Yep. And so to me that's the, that is the crazy disconnect is like, as a coach on the floor, it's so absurd to think like, I'm gonna keep doing the same stuff I'm doing, but I want a different result.

[00:15:57] Dan Uyemura: Like that. All that stuff's obvious, but in your business you freeze about it. You're like, I want a different result, but I'm gonna come in and mop today. You know, like the inputs have to change just as much as your client's inputs have to change if they want a different result, you know? Right. And so you gotta think about the inputs.

[00:16:13] Nick Reyes: A hundred percent. Yeah. Uh, and so then the last one, uh, and man, this one, this one's personally can be tough for me at times, which is systems and processes. So if you're working on your business. I think you are oftentimes trying to build the systems required for you to not be there. You're trying to build yourself out of a job in, out of a, a level one job or a level two job in many ways, and to where you don't have to do the day-to-day things or it's easy for someone else to come and just run that playbook.

[00:16:50] Dan Uyemura: Yep. Right. Yeah. Lemme give a guardrail to that. I actually feel, uh, a slight bit of, um, cognitive dissonance to this. You're right a hundred percent. Like you should be building the playbooks that get you out of the business, the the po. The pause for caution I will give, and this is from my own personal vantage point, is if you do that too fast, you don't set the culture that allows it to happen in your vision, and you're gonna end up with like not the right outcome.

[00:17:21] Dan Uyemura: It's this balance between, and I'm sure you've, you've seen this recently, like I will helicopter in and be like, hold on, tell me more. I need to know, da dah, dah, dah. And I'm actually inserting myself more in the process for certain things. Mm-hmm. And if you, if you just fully, like, I feel like I've gotten bitten by the trust, don't verify thing more enough where now I'm like, I have to, I have to make sure that they understand exactly with clarity, like how I feel it needs to be done or they need to change my mind so we're aligned.

[00:17:49] Nick Reyes: Yeah. I feel. I think we're saying the same thing. Yeah, it is like your systems and processes will need course correction or cultural correction maybe. And it's that, you know, you set 'em all up, the team is executing them, uh, in various ways, and then you will, will come back in or the, you know, you as a business owner comes back in and says, you know what?

[00:18:16] Nick Reyes: Why are we doing it this way? Let's, let's shift this. Let's change this. I see in the data that this is something I need to pay attention to. So maybe we just blow up this entire process. But the answer should be you have a process, you revisit it, and you run loops around it. 

[00:18:32] Dan Uyemura: Yeah, and I do, I do say from, from, again, from my position, it's super important as the owner of the gym or the CEO or whatever, to be open to the fact that someone could figure it out better than you.

[00:18:42] Dan Uyemura: Because, just 'cause it's not, how you pictured it to be done doesn't mean it's not the way it should be done. But you do, you should go in and just say, like, just explain that to me. Mm-hmm. I'm open to learning, I'm opening, I'm open to being wrong, but I'm, I feel conviction. That is nice. So, so this is where I go back to the, um, like very strong opinions loosely held.

[00:19:00] Dan Uyemura: Mm-hmm. I think that if you don't have strong opinions as a leader, like your whole company is gonna just morph out from underneath you. 

[00:19:06] Nick Reyes: It's, it's one of the things about. The way that you operate that I really do appreciate, which is the, uh, tell me more about it. I'm open to being wrong. I wanna learn about why you're doing this here, and here are my thoughts on it.

[00:19:21] Nick Reyes: Act afterwards, like some more questions. And again, it kinda goes back to the digging deep. Mm-hmm. But you put someone in place, you do trust 'em to do it, but then you also get to learn the, the process that someone who was focused on just that area. So in the gym, it'd be equivalent of like, oh, we brought on a salesperson and they.

[00:19:38] Nick Reyes: Decided that they didn't like any of the sales process stuff that we were originally doing. It's like, okay, well try it out. Okay, now tell me about it. Mm-hmm. What did you do? What did you change? Why did you change? It shouldn't be if, if you got the right person, it shouldn't be offensive. They should be like, this is why.

[00:19:52] Dan Uyemura: Yeah. 

[00:19:53] Nick Reyes: You know, 

[00:19:53] Dan Uyemura: and, and the reality of it all too. It's like the true answer probably lies somewhere between you and them. Or, you know, if, if you're at conflict. Mm-hmm. And it's just like, you've gotta be able to, willing to work to find the, that middle area that where you're both wrong and you're both right.

[00:20:07] Dan Uyemura: Yep. For the betterment of the company and the customer. 

[00:20:09] Nick Reyes: Yep. Because wrong and right could be in the data and the output, the scoreboard wrong and right. Could be in the culture. Yeah. Or the core values or the tenets that you operate within, you know, so there there's some things to unpack there For sure.

[00:20:22] Dan Uyemura: Yeah. Hopefully we didn't go too meta there over people's heads. 

[00:20:27] Nick Reyes: So, you know, to, to wrap this up, uh, I think it's a lot about when you, once you have your leverage back, where do you spend it? And these are all the different areas that, that we would encourage you to invest your time in, uh, as a gym owner, as an entrepreneur, uh.

[00:20:43] Nick Reyes: I would love to know what is the longest amount of time that you have gone without taking a class, so to say, or without coaching a class for the sake of just, you know, trying to stay on top of things and instead rededicated all of that time back into one of the areas that we highlighted in working on your business.

[00:21:02] Nick Reyes: Email us podcast@pushpress.com 

[00:21:04] Dan Uyemura: and I think we're finding a trend here. I'm gonna, I have another question. I have another question. Dang it. Finding a trend. What I would love to know from people is like, Hey, if you don't spend dedicated forest time, which is probably most of you, go take a one hour walk today or tomorrow and focus your energy, your mind on your business, and email me and tell me what revolutionary thing you thought of, like what mind blowing thing came to your mind in that one hour of time that you're able to spend on it.

[00:21:31] Dan Uyemura: podcast@pushpress.com. I almost said pushpress@podcast.com. Thanks guys. See ya. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Push Press podcast, where we help gym owners, entrepreneurs and fitness enthusiasts thrive with actionable insights, inspiring stories and strategies for growth. 

[00:21:48] Nick Reyes: Don't forget to follow the show to stay updated on new episodes.

[00:21:51] Nick Reyes: And if you're ready for more, join our free Facebook community for gym owners. Check the show notes for the link and we'll see you next time. Keep raising the bar for your business and community.

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