How to franchise your business with Bryce Henson | PoP 684

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A photo of Bryce Henson is captured.Bryce Henson is CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp, the world's fastest-growing fitness boot camp franchise.. Bryce Henson is featured on Practice of the Practice, a therapist podcast.

What is the connection between your physiological health and achieving financial success? Are you interested in starting a coaching business in tandem with your counseling? What can you do to improve your leadership skills?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks about how to franchise your business with Bryce Henson.

Podcast Sponsor: Faith in Practice Conference

A photo of the Faith in Practice Conference is featured as the podcast sponsor of the Practice of the Practice.

The Faith in Practice Conference is a unique space for faith-based counselors to develop their clinical skills, boost their business acumen, and take time away for quietness and reflection.

  • Dates: Thursday, April 21st to Sunday, April 24th, 2022
  • Location: Courtyard Marriott on Jekyll Island
  • Cost: $350 p/p *Does not include food and lodging; Limited to 100 participants*

Limited tickets are now on sale, make sure to grab yours here.

Meet Bryce Henson

A photo of Bryce Henson is captured. He is the CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp, as well as a speaker and podcaster. Bryce is featured on the Practice of the Practice, a therapist podcast.Bryce Henson is CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp, the world’s fastest-growing fitness boot camp franchise. He has over 10 years of experience in the fitness industry and owns 2 FBBC locations.

Bryce mentors fitness professionals on how to grow their businesses and change more lives in their local communities. He also co-leads FBBC Mastermind Group, an exclusive coaching group for high-performing fitness professionals.

Visit Bryce Henson’s website and connect with him on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and LinkedIn.

Listen to the Fitness Franchise Podcast.

In This Podcast

  • Bryce’s top three health tips
  • The connection between physical health and financial success
  • How to franchise your practice
  • Leadership skills
  • Bryce’s advice to private practitioners

Bryce’s top three health tips

1 – Work out at least three times a week for 30 minutes.

Additionally, blend your workouts: combine cardio exercises like sprinting or running with body-weight exercises like weight-lifting.

That will drastically improve your physique, mental clarity, your endorphins, your physiology … that [blending alone] will drastically help. (Bryce Henson)

2 – Drink half your body weight in ounces of water.

3 – Get at least seven or eight hours of sleep.

If you do [these] three things you will improve your life, your fitness, and also make more money in the process. (Bryce Henson)

The connection between physical health and financial success

Your financial success is dependent on your health, and if you are doing well, you are more likely to be successful in your work.

By taking care of your physical and mental health you will have more energy, feel energized, be optimistic, and be ready to put in the effort to work hard.

Being physically and mentally healthy also makes it easier to be creative, think outside of the box, and come up with new ideas as to how you can improve and scale your company.

How to franchise your practice

1 – Focus on developing leadership skills.

Leadership is [vital] in developing a consulting practice. [Firstly] you need to be able to lead yourself and have the fortitude and discipline, [and then also] lead your clients … and then your teammates. (Bryce Henson)

2 – Boost your marketing efforts and optimize them.

  • Word-of-mouth marketing is the gold standard when it comes to consulting businesses
  • Craft a compelling offer to your audience
  • Do not be afraid to invest money in marketing on social media platforms

3 – Build your leadership skills: lead yourself, your clients, and your teammates.

Leadership skills

Leadership is, in my experience of running a business, always the problem and always the solution. So, if you have an organization that is hitting the lid and not [running] at its potential, there’s a leadership problem at play. (Bryce Henson)

Four pillars of leadership:

  • Courage
  • Connection
  • Communication
  • Consistency

Remember that leadership is a skill that can be developed over time, so if you are new to being a leader, you can and will improve.

Bryce’s advice to private practitioners

You do not have everything figured out before you start. Have some vision and direction, but the staircase does not have to be fully complete before you take the first step. Each action creates more clarity, so take one step at a time.

Books mentioned in this episode:

Useful Links mentioned in this episode:

Podcast Sponsors:

  • Blueprint helps clinicians enhance client outcomes through the power and promise of digital measurement-based care. Learn more and request your demo at: bph.link/joe
  • Faith in Practice Conference: Limited tickets are now on sale, make sure to grab yours here.

Check out these additional resources:

 

Meet Joe Sanok

A photo of Joe Sanok is displayed. Joe, private practice consultant, offers helpful advice for group practice owners to grow their private practice. His therapist podcast, Practice of the Practice, offers this advice.

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

Thanks For Listening!

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Podcast Transcription

[JOE SANOK]
Measurement-based care has proven to improve patient outcomes, but it’s historically been time consuming and costly to implement. At Blueprint, they believe that nothing should get in the way of delivering the highest quality mental healthcare to your clients; not a lack of finances, clinicians, time or technology. That’s why they’ve developed an end to end solution that administer scores and charts, hundreds of symptom rating scales to give you deeper insights into how your clients are progressing. Learn more and request your demo at bph.link/joe. Again, that’s bph.link/joe.

This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 684.

I’m Joe Sanok, your host, and welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. I hope your first quarter is going great. It’s already mid-March, holy cow. So hopefully you are still kicking it with your goals and you are rocking out 2022. Today I’m really, one thing I really value when I have guests is to have people that are outside of the counseling industry. That’s, I think one of the things that really sets Practice of the Practice apart, is we interview people that are doing all sorts of business, marketing, SEO, and just thinking in ways that we can learn from.

It’s interesting, I don’t remember what book it was but there was, I think it was a Malcolm Gladwell book where they were talking about this ER that was in, I think it was the UK and they founded the most errors that were happening was in the handoff between the emergency room and then like going to the room after having emergency room care. So they actually went and trained with like a race car pit crew to see how they changed tires and got everything handing off really quickly. They learned outside of their own industry and then applied it back into their own industry.

I really took that to heart, especially as I have this podcast where I want to find people that are just doing interesting things in the business world, in the life world, and to bring those ideas and put it through the lens of private practice. So today I’m so excited I have Bryce Henson. Bryce is a CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp, and it’s pretty amazing, they also have a podcast Fitness Franchise Podcast, and it’s all about the ins and outs of owning a successful franchise and thinking like a franchise owner. So today we’re going to be chatting with Bryce all about franchises, about Fit Body Boot Camp, his story, and some things that we can pull into the private practice world. So Bryce, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. Really glad the chair today,
[BRYCE HENSON]
Joe, super soaked to on and thanks for having me. Yes, hopefully you’re onset of 2021 has been or 22, excuse me, still in the hang of it, has been productive.
[JOE]
Yes. I think we’re launching some new things and sustaining some old things. So it’s pretty awesome to see what’s unfolded at the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022. Well, let’s just start with, how did you get into the fitness franchise world? I want to clarify right from the beginning, because I asked you this before we got going Fit Body Boot Camp is not one of those multi-level marketing things. It’s not like beach body or something like that. It’s standalone businesses. So tell us first, what is Fit Body Boot Camp? Then we’ll go into your backstory of how you got into this work.
[BRYCE]
Yes, totally. So Fit Body Boot Camp, we’re the world’s fastest indoor fitness franchise system. We have hundreds of locations in North America and our secret sauce is we get our clients twice the workout twice the results and half the time through our 30 minute sessions of high intensity interval training. Additionally, we provide nutrition support, which is really the majority of the battle and body composition change. So we really, I like to consider ourselves a transformation factory with our mission and our intense focus to inspire fitness and change lives every day. So that’s a 30,000 foot view.
[JOE]
No, thank you for that. How’d you get into this work?
[BRYCE]
Great question. Well, I guess I’ll start with my own personal transformation story because it starts there. Then of course, if you want to have any other questions about the business aspect, we can dive into those too. But interestingly enough, we were talking offline. I’m originally from the Midwest, just like you and the state of Michigan although I grew up on the south side or the Southern part of the state and you and the Northern part.
[JOE]
There’s a divide side that, between the east side and west side. I feel like there is a little bit of a divide there, sometimes.
[BRYCE]
There can be there for sure, but all fun and games and certainly we’re on the same path. So I love that aspect of our relationship. That all said, as much as I love the Midwest and I was actually just back there for the holidays, great people, great place to grow up, not necessarily the fitness capital of the world. So there I was, I was 21 years old, I went to Michigan state, graduated from there and while I got through school I definitely was not the epitome of fitness. In fact taco bell and keg parties were really the staple of my diet for those first four years. So when I landed a sales opportunity, a job opportunity in Southern California when I was 21 years old, just after I graduated and I was excited, the Palm trees, the blue skies, the beaches, just all of what Southern California is known for, and yes, it definitely lived up to it.

There was definitely a lot of bright days. But if I’m being honest with you, Joe, and to your audience, there was a lot more dark days. I mean, first and foremost, moving anywhere is very hard. So it’s 3000 miles from home. I had very little friends. My network was very small. I very little professional skills, which I could add to the marketplace, but most importantly, I was not a fit guy. I was an obese, but I was about 20 pounds of weight to overweight, a lot of fat in my body and very little muscle in my body. So I had confidence issues, I was not secure and I didn’t have the energy and enthusiasm I do have today.

So I lived that way for about, about a year, year and a half in a fortuitous situation happened actually a close friend of mine from the west side of the state, your side, Joe went to college with, ended up moving to Southern California. He was not on the cover of men’s health, but he certainly could have been. He had the six pack abs, the vibrancy, the confidence, all the girls loved him. I really looked up to that and we ended up living together for a period of a couple years.

It took me about three months, if I’m being honest with you to finally muster enough courage to ask him, “Hey Adam, would you show me how to be fit and lift weights and do what you do?” He turned to me and said, “Bryce, I certainly will, but as you imagined, I get this question asked a lot. You saw that from our college buddies. I’ll do it on one condition. That condition is you stick with whatever I say, you’re going to do whatever I say within the program that I create for us over the next 90 days. After those 90 days, if you want to quit, you can quit but that way, at least you get a fair shot.”

To me that sounded fine. It sounded like a challenge I was up for. So we got to work that following week and it was actually the very beginning of 2007, so over 15 years ago. I got to be honest with it. The first part of those workouts were brutal and I thought about quitting more times than not, but I stuck with it. After a period of three months, but really it was about six to nine months, I ended up transforming my body completely. I dropped 20 pounds of fat, put on 20 pounds of muscle. I ended up weighing the same both before and after, but just changed my body composition. But as any of your audience enlisters know, fitness, while it can provide that aesthetic look it literally does way more than that changed my life.

It changed it to my core. My energy, my confidence just skyrocketed. I became the best selling or the best performing sales rep in my company. It really just boosted my life, if you will, through the roof. It was at that point, I guess, shortly thereafter, probably two years into my journey when someone came up to me and asked me how I lift weights, asked me how I eat well. That was the first light bulb moment that wow maybe I can actually start a coaching and consulting business to help other people. That’s really from a personal transformation perspective how that story got started. I’m happy to color in any details from a business perspective as well.
[JOE]
I read the Four Hour Body that Timothy Ferris wrote. What are your thoughts? So the basic premises, you lift a whole bunch for a really short period of time and eat a really high calorie diet. He even said drink a gallon of milk a day, which I tried for one day and got halfway through the gallon and it was like going to puke up milk. It was terrible. But like, what are your, just your thoughts on that approach to it in regards to gaining muscle mass and growing in those ways?
[BRYCE]
Yes, well, I’ve admittedly have not read that book, but I have watched or read the Four Hour Work Week. I think there’s a lot of value there. And taking a 30,000 foot view, I think there’s value in the concept of the four hour body in the sense of you actually, from a workout perspective, don’t need to spend and invest two, three hours at the gym. You don’t need to be spending hours and hours programming and executing your workouts. You can actually do it very efficiently, especially if you hire a coach. The value, the secret sauce of our program at Fit Body Boot Camp, but just any circuit program in general is you can get twice the workout half the time. Literally in 30 minutes a day, you can transform your body from a workout perspective.

So I love that philosophy of that just high level but in terms of drinking a milk gallon milk a day definitely would not advise that probably. A few others as as well, but yes that I think is a really good point. That all said it is hard, fitness is simple, it’s not easy, it’s difficult. It takes some time dedication, but it’s just like a muscle. As you continue to develop that muscle, it gets easier. You get better and you start to change your eating choices and then get to the gym a little bit more but it really, at the end of the day, you can actually become fit with focused determination and actually a fraction of the time that you probably think so, as long as you have a good coach.
[JOE]
The Faith in Practice Conference is right around the corner. It starts on Thursday, April 21st until Sunday, April 24th. It’s going to be at the Courtyard Marriot, Jekyll Island. It’s going to be amazing. The Faith in Practice Conference is a unique space for faith-based counselors of all kinds to develop their clinical skills, boost their business acumen and take time away for quietness and reflection. I can’t wait to be a part of the Faith in Practice Conference. Will you join me? Head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/faithinpracticeconference. Again, that’s faith in Practice Conference over at practiceofthepractice.com/faithinpracticeconference, to learn more, see pictures and see who’s speaking at the Faith in Practice Conference. I can’t wait to see there in Georgia.
[JOE]
So I would love for folks, say they only listen to this podcast interview. Maybe they don’t hire a coach, but they they’re like what, “Bryce, give me some low-hanging fruit.” We’re a couple months into 2022, maybe some of the resolutions they’ve fallen off. What are a couple things that people can take as small changes that are going to help their overall fitness, lifestyle, mindset that just from this episode, they could say, okay, wow, that was huge value that I got just from these few tips that Bryce gave?
[BRYCE]
Totally. I have a few right off the top of my head. Number one, work out your body or move your body at least three times a week for 30 minutes. That is literally for those three days. It’s 2% of your day. So I tell my clients if they can’t give me that I really can’t help them because it is an investment. Now granted a small investment that in the grand scheme of things, but move your body. Additionally, make sure you get, you blend your work out. So you’re only working on a half an hour, but don’t be full. You should be moving that half an hour. You should blend in cardio training, so you’re doing sprinting or running and then maybe doing some body weight training. So if you have access to a gym, you’re lifting weights, or you can do body weight, pushups and sit-ups and things of that nature, but that right there alone, by just moving your body three times a week for 30 minutes, a clip that will drastically improve your physique, your mental clarity, your endorphins, your physiology, if I can even say that correctly.

Forgive me I didn’t even hit that, but that alone right there will drastically help. The other two things I always touch on is drinking half your body weight ounces of water. So I know you just jokingly talked about the four-hour body about drinking a gallon of milk. Replace that for a gallon of water and honestly the toxins will flush out of your body. You will eat less, you’ll feel more full. So that’s a huge game changer. The third aspect would be to get at least seven, if not eight hours of sleep. If you do those three things, you’ll drastically improve your life, improve your fitness and also make more money in the process, which it’s happened for me. It’s happened for countless of my clients.
[JOE]
Yes. Well, I know I solidly have down the sleep one and the exercise one, I would say I’m doing pretty good with, but the water one, yes, I definitely am failing that one. I drink a lot of tea and coffee and then carbonated water. But yes, that’s good to just say half your body weight. When you see people, so you made the connection there between your fitness and your health and your business. Tell me more about that. Tell me about mindset and what you see with people that focus on their health and why that helps their businesses.
[BRYCE]
Yes, totally. Well, I guess a story I tell a little bit more and really hit from that perspective and curtail into the business aspect. But as I mentioned before, in early 2007, which is 15 years from this taping at the moment I was going specifically just for the physique, if I’m being very honest with you, and yes, I got that, but it literally changed my life. I became more energetic, enthusiastic, more positive, like the rewiring of your brain circuitry, physiologically I finally hit it. It literally changes your body. So it gave me more inspiration, more motivation. So from a sales perspective and an ambition perspective, it just literally went through the roof. I started getting into work early. I started making that extra call. Then of course you, when you take one step that next step becomes easier.

Really what confidence is is stacking little wins. So that’s what really catapulted my not only fitness, but also business journey and as mentioned when that gentleman came up to me at the gym and asked me how to lift weights and asked me how to eat, that sparked my interest, “I can actually start a coaching and consulting business.” So what I did was do the next logical step. I ended up enrolling and passing my National Academy of Sports medicine certification, which is the gold standard for personal training. I think at that time I updated my Facebook profile to certified personal trainer. I got some clients, but more importantly, I started receiving ads from this gentleman named Pedros Coolin. Who’s actually the founder of Fit Body Boot Camp. He passed the CEO reigns to me in mid of 2021.

But I started getting on his email list and learning about business and sales and marketing and persuasion and how to grow a consulting business within the fitness space. I followed him for about a year and a half and at that period of time actually decided to move abroad for a couple years and living in South America, in Brazil specifically, and had this awesome life of experience. So I was focusing at that while in the meantime on the back end was still keeping with my fitness and was also reading up on the content that he was putting out.

In early 2012. When I knew I was coming back to California, because since then, as you mentioned, or as I mentioned, we moved to Los Angeles from the Midwest, so when I was coming back to California I started paying a little bit more attention to this Fit Body Boot Camp brand that he was starting. I put in an expressive interest, had some conversations and before you know it, I was in Chino Hills, California meeting with Pedros and ended up signing my first franchise agreement. That was mid 2012, ended up launching my first fitness business consulting business in November, 2012 and that really catapulted me for the next five years.

I ended up scaling to four locations, brought my family onboard, had a ton of success. I had a lot of failures in the process as well because let’s face it, it’s not all sunshines and rainbow. So there was a lot of learning lessons, especially in the leadership perspective and managing people, et cetera. But about mid 2018 after developing a relationship with Pedors without after scaling to multiple locations, he knew that the Fit Body Boot Camp brand was hockey sticking and really growing exponentially.

He made the offer for me to join him and the leadership team, which I joined as his vice president. For about three years, we’ve worked to build a coaching and profitability team and dial in our marketing, our systems, our support and training, and mid 2021 is when he decided because of his other business endeavors, that while he’s still going to be the visionary of the company and really helped influence the marketing he wanted to pass the reins off to me for the day to day operations. That’s really how I got the CEO title. Really, I’m proud of that for a few reasons. One, the CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp is also a client of Fit Body Boot Camp. I go work out three times a week, just like I tell my clients.

I’m also, I started as the janitor because when you’re owning and starting your own consulting business, you got to be a Jack of all trades. That was really proud, a moment, a story to tell about, but I’m also an owner of a multi-location and also the CEO. So I have a lot of different perspective and one of the biggest things that I see to put a bow on this is people that come through our program, and I’ll talk about our clients that we refer to, our avatar as Mrs. Jones, she comes in, she’s not confident. She doesn’t have self-esteem, let’s face it, or I should provide visibility to your audience, our market demographic, our client avatar. We’re not training fitness athletes trying to shave off a second to make the NFL combine.

We are training Mrs. Jones, who has two kids, 40 pounds overweight. Her husband doesn’t look at her anymore and she probably hasn’t worked out since high school, if at all, ever. So by bringing a really condensed program, 30 minute, that provides incredible results. It exponentially increases Mrs. Jones’ quality of life. She becomes a better woman, a better spouse, a better parent, and really a better working professional as well. So it just has massive effects. That’s why I’m so proud of, I guess, the Fit Body Boot Camp model and rally, I wanted to give your audience a little bit of backstory to the business aspect as well.
[JOE]
So in franchising, so I know there’s a number of folks that have a counseling practice. Actually, I just interviewed Nicole Ball, who bought Mental Wellness Counseling from me. She’s adding locations and I think she was even last week, let me just look real quick at the schedule, yes, she was the previous episode, last Thursday. So thinking about someone like Nicole and she has Mental Wellness Counseling, it’s going well, she’s looking at growing it, what are some lessons from your franchising that maybe some of these practice owners could take away as they think about, maybe they might want to franchise their own practice.
[BRYCE]
Totally. Great question. If I had a crystal ball and I could tell myself, or at least go back in time, I should say 2012, when I first started my first business I would’ve told myself to complete two things. Number one, completely focus on developing leadership skills and leadership is yes, it can be someone’s identity especially good leaders, but it’s just a skill just like learning how to read, how to write, how to lift weights. It’s just a learnable skill. So leadership is so important in developing a consulting practice. Number one, you need to label to lead yourself and have that mental fortitude and discipline, but then of course, lead your clients, lead your following, and then of course lead your teammates when you bring them on.

I’ll dive in to leadership, at least my four core principles here in a second. The second thing is marketing. You cannot be afraid to market. Word of mouth marketing is definitely a very, very strong attribute, especially in the consulting practices, but you also have to be able to craft a really compelling offer and not be afraid to invest money on social media, on Facebook, on Instagram and or other marketing platforms. Because most times in my experience, especially with new franchisees coming on and I was the same way, I was a bit gun shy investing money, but you have to create an offer that’s really compelling to get people in your door and you have, you can’t be afraid to market. So those would be the two high level I guess bullet points that I would tell my younger version myself, that’s going to be very relatable to your audience and I’m happy to dive into leadership perspective, which I have a little bit more insight if you be so kind.
[JOE]
Yes, I definitely want to hit the leadership stuff, but how do you make the case to somebody about why they should say franchise versus just put that money into starting something of their own? So I’m thinking about if someone came to me and said, “All right, Joe, I want to hire you as a consultant. Should I invest in this franchise counseling business that’s going to cost me X number of thousands of dollars a year. It’s going to help with branding. They’re already ranking number one in Google for these search terms. Or should I put all that money into starting my own thing?” How do you make the case for a franchise? I think that’ll help people if they want to start franchising their own practice.
[BRYCE]
Totally. Well, I think I’ll start off actually playing devil’s advocate and would say, it’s not for everyone. Franchising is definitely not for everyone. We at Fit Body Boot Camp have adopted a system called EOS, which stands for Entrepreneur Operating System. The author or the creator of it named Gina Wickman wrote an incredible book called Traction for Your Audience. But any case he diagnosis that about 4% of the world’s population are true visionaries. So for true visionaries, I think of Elon Musk, I think of Steve Jobs, I think of Bill Gates and the list goes on, for true thorough-bred visionaries that are just creative mindset that have a million ideas and are just mega entrepreneurs, I would say, franchising is not for you. But again, and the reason that is these people, they just have big visions and they don’t want to be corralled into a proven business model.

They March to the beat of their own drum. That’s totally fine. The thing though is less than 5% actually, the stat 4% of the population is. So for the other 96% that aren’t mega entrepreneurs or mega visionaries, the value is having a proven business model. For me, when we’re bringing on, we just brought on five Fit Body Boot Camp, new owners this past month to our brand. The value that they have, number one is literally over a decade of experience just with our franchise. We have the game plan, we have the playbook, we have the systems, we have the strategies. Could someone else do that on their own and create that? Absolutely. What’s the cost though? Either they’re going to invest the dollars up front or you’re going to invest the time. For me, I would much, rather in the reason I made that decision I would much rather invest the money because ultimately up front that’s going to time clocks and quicken my financial success.

On top of that, even if you had all that institutional knowledge to get the business off the ground, the ongoing coaching, the support, the marketing. Marketing always changes. One of the biggest values that I see from our owners that have been our brand for a while, that continue to stay with us is because we’re always testing. We’re always trying new things. The beautiful thing is there’s just no way that any one particular owner could execute the amount of tests that we have as a brand any given time. But the value of our brand is literally we have about 10 tests right now from a marketing perspective, from a systems perspective, from an onboarding perspective, a new offer that we’re bringing people on called our grand slam offer that at any given time we can run all these tests and actually the cream’s going to rise to the top, the test that don’t work.

Okay, bummer. But hey, they didn’t work. That’s the reason we test. Then only the tests that are proven that are successful, that we actually create assets and resources around, we actually push out to our brand and that alone between the foundation, the time collapse, the systems, the business, the experience, and then additionally ongoing, the support, the creativity, the testing, and the innovation within our brand that’s game changing. I learned the latter half from a gentleman named Tom Monahan, who’s actually a Michigan guy, started Domino’s pizza. He was famously quoted saying something along the lines of his job as the franchisor was actually create the structure of the brand, but his franchisees job was actually to innovate so that they can continue to be the tip of the spear and share that with the rest of the system. I think Joe, from my perspective, those are a couple big, big takeaways in addition to playing devil’s advocate on the power of franchising.
[JOE]
Oh, so awesome. Well, take us through those leadership mindsets and quadrants you were talking about.
[BRYCE]
Yes, totally. I really hit on that point because the leadership in the marketing or the two big points that would literally tell my younger self. And specifically leadership, oh man, it’s when you are starting any business and especially a consulting business where you’re going to have clients and followers and potentially bring on team members, just like we do at our local Fit Body Boot Camp gyms, the average location has about 250 members with about five staff, whether it be coaches or admin and leadership is just, in my experience in running business, it is always the problem and is always the solution. So if you have an organization that’s just hitting their lid, it’s not really living up to its potential. There’s a leadership problem at play.

What I found to be true in the four categories and really pillars of leadership that I teach on are courage, connection communication and consistency; those four CS you need in spades in order to be an effective leader. Again, I’m going to hit this 0.1 more time that leadership is a skill. If you don’t identify as a strong leader, that’s okay. Don’t think to yourself, I’m not a good leader. Think I need to develop leadership skills. I can tell you that firsthand experience because while I do think that I have some natural DNA for leadership, I’ve been a very poor leader early in my youth and at the end of the day, I’ve developed a lot, but I still have a long way to go as well.

But back to the four pillars, if your courage, it takes courage for a leader to be successful because at the end of the day, you’re betting on yourself, you’re going against the grain and there’s going to be at some point where your followers or your teammates don’t buy in, or at least question the vision and you have to have the courage to know in your heart of heart it’s not only to know that, but actually act on it to be an effective leader. So that’s number one. Number two leadership is about connection. It’s about relationship and the more relationship capital you have, whether you’re with your team, with your clients, the more you’re going to be able to influence them.

And John Maxwell, who I’m sure most of your audience or at least some of your audience knows an incredible author on leadership talks about really leadership at its core is the ability to influence. You have to have strong relationships in your consulting business to be an effective leader. The third aspect is communication and most times people, unfortunately under communicate. If anything, if you’re going to err on the side of caution, you always want to overcommunicate. The reason that is is because human nature rewired just to make up stories.

Now, if I told you Joe, if I literally just sent you a text message, “Hey Joe, we need to talk like, what’s your first thought? Your first thought is like, oh goodness, Bryce is mad at me. I’m upset. That’s just the way our evolutionary brains are wired. So at the end of the day, in order to be an effective leader, you have to communicate and really squash any opportunity for a potential client or a coach or a follow of yours to make up these bad stories that are not sure, that are false, but that’s what just human nature does. You overcome that by strong communication.

The last thing would just be consistency. To be an effective leader, you have to be consistent as the day is long. You’d much rather be mediocre and consistent than exceptional one day and really poor the other day because let’s face it if you are inconsistent, you’re not going to have buy-in from your team, you’re not going to have buy-in from your clients and you’re really going to suffer in order to be effective leader and really effective business owners. So for me, those are the four pillars of leadership that I really teach on that has exponentially helped me as a leader of an eight-figure organization but more importantly helped me lead my local business because I still have two Fit Body Boot Camp locations that I own helped me lead myself, my team and my clients.
[JOE]
Oh man, we have covered some awesome ground talking about why our fitness matters. Even just for myself going through a pretty rough last year, even just planking every single day was just like a great grounding to have some small step in the right direction. So we covered that, talked about franchising, talked about leadership, Bryce, the last question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?
[BRYCE]
I would want them to know that they do not have to have it all figured out to start. Unfortunately, people, just human nature, sometimes we go through the analysis by paralysis mode. While you do have to have vision, you have to have some direction where you’re going. The staircase does not have to be completely clear, but you got to take that step and then take that following step. When you do the staircase does become clear and your path will be defined. So that’s the big call to action, is yes, you need to do your research and diligence and have a vision, but you don’t have to have it all figured out, but you need to take action and then action creates more clarity. Really that’s what I want to leave your listeners with today.
[JOE]
Ah, so awesome. If people want to connect with you more what’s the best way?
[BRYCE]
Great question. Thank you for that. We’d love to stay in touch. Real Bryce Henson, and not to be confused with fake Bryce Henson. So realbrycehenson.com is my website and then all across all social channels from LinkedIn to Instagram, to Facebook that’s where you can find me specifically teaching about fitness, mindset and leadership content.
[JOE]
So awesome. Well thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.
[BRYCE]
Had a great time, Joe. Thanks so much and let’s stay in touch.
[JOE]
So what action are you going to take from this? Are you going to just take some small steps towards your health? Are you going to take big steps towards your health? Are you going to maybe franchise your company, work on your leadership? I know that in the last year especially Alison, Whitney and I, Alison and Whitney have given me such great feedback about how I can be a better leader, how I can think differently, how I can communicate differently to be able to be the best that I can be within Practice of the Practice. This isn’t just the Joe show. We have a whole huge theme now and I need to continue to level up those skills as well. So for me the last year has been really looking into like what’s working within the business? What’s not working? Am I the blockade a lot of times, because I don’t move out of the way of the team? All those sorts of things.

So take Bryce’s advice today. Take some action in some sort. We have had some amazing podcasts. If you missed any of them over the last month, Whitney and Alison did a whole series on launching a group practice. They talked about why to start a group practice in 2022, if you haven’t done one. They did a step by step guide. They interviewed group practice people. They dove in deep. So many cool things that have happened in the last month. So make sure that you go check out those past episodes if you’ve missed them.

Also today, our sponsor is the Faith in Practice Conference. So Whitney Owens, who has the Faith in Practice podcast is hosting the Faith in Practice Conference with Practice of the Practice. So the Faith in Practice Conference is a unique space for faith-based counselors to develop their clinical skills, boost their business skills and also have time away for just some quietness and reflection. That’s coming up, it’s April 21st until Sunday, April 24th. It’s going to be on Jekyll Island. It’s about an hour or so from Jacksonville, which is the closest airport.

So make sure you sign for up for that over at practiceofthepractice.com/faithinpracticeconference. I’m going to be one of the keynote speakers at that. It is limited to a hundred participants and at the time of this recording, we have 60% of those tickets already sold. So you want to grab that. So thanks so much for listening to us and letting us into your ears and into your brain have an amazing day. We’ll talk to you soon.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We really like it. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.