38 - Changing Long-Held Beliefs, with Taryn

Help Best

0:00: What's up guys, Taryn Dubreuil here, asked to be a guest on Coop's Help, Best Mentor podcast this week and I am super stoked here to share a story and some tips about how to deal with clients who are longtime gym owners come into mentorship and have some of the most closed off minds you might have ever worked with.

0:19: These clients are tough.

0:21: They are exhausting but they need our help just as much, if not more, just like everyone else we get to work with.

0:28: So when I thought back on this, there really is three main ways these clients present themselves to us.

0:34: It might sound something like this.

0:36: And so the first one is, this is just how I've always done it.

0:40: I'm sure you've worked with people who are unwilling to change for whatever reason and this is often their go to line.

0:46: This is just how I've always done it.

0:48: The second type of these people is when it goes away from their belief and they're not willing to weigh data and evidence against those beliefs.

0:58: OK?

0:58: Those are tough.

1:00: And the third one is that it won't work for me.

1:03: People the classics.

1:05: Coop asked me to cover this topic because I've been working with one of these exact types through stage one and two over the past couple of months.

1:12: And I finally had some breakthrough success with him.

1:16: For context, he's a 14 plus year crossfit gym owner.

1:20: He lives and breathes everything about crossfit, like the real O G type of crossfit attitude and by his measures, he runs a quote unquote successful gym.

1:31: He's a great dude and sure they have a popular gym.

1:35: If you just looked at how many members he has, he has like 300 members.

1:39: But as we know, metrics tell a different story.

1:42: And so that's the case he's in immediately, he had three big pieces of resistance that presented themselves early in our conversations.

1:51: The very first one he brought up was there was no way he was running an on ramp.

1:56: He never has never will.

1:58: Crossfit is for everyone.

2:00: He gets way too many transfers from other gyms.

2:03: People are gym shopping and this would just be a big barrier like his excuse list was a mile long.

2:10: The second resistance piece was that N SI S weren't necessary.

2:13: There was no need to install a book sales appointment when he already had 300 members.

2:19: And he did that without N SI S already.

2:21: Ok.

2:22: Third one, additional services just weren't in the question.

2:26: It was crossfit and crossfit only.

2:28: Just group classes.

2:29: No P T no nutrition.

2:31: Nothing.

2:32: Just crossfit.

2:33: All right.

2:34: Ok.

2:34: Laid it out on the table for me.

2:36: I knew I was gonna have trouble with him probably about 5 to 10 minutes into our very first meeting.

2:42: So he would bring these resistant pieces all up on his own before I could even ask any questions.

2:48: It would sound something like, hey, Tarn, I read through the modules.

2:51: I watched the videos but I didn't bother doing the homework because of X Y Z.

2:56: Like there was no chance to have a discussion about it.

2:59: He watched the videos and he made that decision before we could even talk about it.

3:04: And admittedly, it took me probably about two calls to really find a rhythm and a cadence to my conversation with him basically until I could figure out more about his personality.

3:14: And that would tell me how I needed to approach him.

3:17: And so here's, here's what I did to build success with him and I hope you can take away some key points that can help you too.

3:24: I really nailed it down to five things.

3:26: So the first one was educate.

3:29: First, I had to ask myself, does he just maybe need a little bit more information?

3:34: Does he maybe need some more context?

3:36: Maybe some proof, maybe a little bit more dialogue.

3:39: So I've I tried giving him examples of other gyms in terrain or of my own gym of what the data proven tactics had produced and I actually figured out that proof was what he was looking for because we had a mutual bonding point over having 14 year affiliates.

3:57: So this helped implement some tactics.

4:00: He just needed social proof of the things we had in common.

4:03: The fact that we were 14 year affiliates.

4:05: We both had this O G crossfit attitude, this and that and that showing that it worked in my gym and other old, not old as in old, old, but just longtime affiliates that if it worked in ours, it would work in his, it didn't solve all of my problems, but it was, it started to push the ball where I needed to go.

4:24: So the second thing was, is asking more questions to figure out exactly what the resistance was like.

4:31: Usually the problem is not actually the surface level problem they're giving you, it's either a different problem or a deeper problem.

4:39: So a different problem was turns out he had a reluctance to implement some things because he actually had some staff problems brewing and that paralyzed him knowing that he would need to implement staff into that equation.

4:52: Ok.

4:52: Cool.

4:52: That's a whole different problem.

4:54: And by solving that problem helped me get him to implement some other things.

4:58: Once we figured out that was the different problem, other things like hi, the deeper problems which were like his projections, it just turned out he was a little scarcity minded about money and So the fact of a sales conversation didn't sit well with him.

5:12: So we just needed to navigate through some projections that he had.

5:15: It still didn't solve all of the problems.

5:17: So the third tactic I used with him was I needed to meet halfway on the important things.

5:23: And I've really, I've kind of narrowed this down into two subsections of this approach.

5:28: So the first one is I would ask him, are you married to the idea of dot dot dot And I would refer to something he's already doing.

5:37: This would tell me how committed he is to the things that he's already doing, which he had no problem stating were working for him since he had 300 members.

5:48: So essentially, I was just testing the waters on what he was willing to budge on and what he wasn't.

5:53: And this helps me make decisions for myself on what to push on and what to pull back on.

5:59: The second sort of subsection of this.

6:01: I would ask him is how can we meet halfway on this?

6:05: And by asking him this, he came up with a solution.

6:08: This is just me getting him to commit to building some sort of skeleton of the concept that I wanted and start because done is better than perfect.

6:18: And I know that later on, I can come back to this and I can continue to build on to it.

6:23: Kind of like when you put a client through your own on ramp.

6:27: And they're terrible movers.

6:28: And you know that once you, you get them into group or P T or whatever their next step is, you can continue to refine their movement even better after they finish their on ramp with you.

6:38: OK.

6:38: Same thing.

6:39: This also, this kind of approach also helps him believe in it better since he came up with the idea of where to meet halfway.

6:46: So basically just lead the horse to water.

6:50: This the fourth one was perspective.

6:53: He only sees what's directly in front of him.

6:56: I know what the bigger picture is.

6:58: I know that this little thing we're focused on right now in this very moment is actually 10 stepping stones towards something really bigger that he wants.

7:07: I found out that he was told about rate increases on a sales call and he got super hyper focused on that.

7:15: He just wanted to raise his rates.

7:17: But you and I know that we can't do that in stage one and two.

7:20: And then we need some important stepping stones before we do that to ensure the success of the that rate increase.

7:25: Cool.

7:26: That's the story I had to tell to get him to buy into the process.

7:31: If you want the rate increase, when we get to growth, we need these preceding steps to be in place.

7:36: And here's why so find the motivator use your perspective to paint the picture.

7:42: And I mean, in regards to perspective, I'd often tell him too that he's paying for my perspective that I've been in his shoes.

7:50: I've walked further in them than he has.

7:52: I know what's coming down the road, both good and bad.

7:55: He doesn't.

7:57: So when we would refer to the rate increase, this was a great place to add the importance of the perspective of the mentor and how that's a strength for him.

8:07: Ok.

8:08: The last one, tough love.

8:10: Now, I know not everyone is great at this and probably some of our newer team members might be terrified to use this tactic.

8:18: And me myself, I only use it in special circumstances when I absolutely need to usually for a problematic client, it's like once.

8:25: But for him, I had to, I had to go to this many times and earlier than I probably normally would have.

8:32: This is tough questions like why are you doing this or why are you paying for something if you don't trust the process or even just do you trust me and just asking very direct questions like that.

8:46: So he can be truthful and honest about understanding that him not acting on these evidence-based steps, he's essentially stopping his own progress.

8:56: And so the end result after three months of working through first steps with him was that I finally got him to come around and take baby steps with some of the major requirements that we need them to build into their businesses before they advance.

9:08: When he saw the money coming in, him hitting his 60 K goal and essentially checking off the invisible check boxes towards his rate increase.

9:19: He bought into it more and more each time we spoke.

9:22: So I hope that these tactics work for you guys and any of the problem clients that you might have right now.

9:28: If you need any other help, just reach out.

9:30: I'm super happy to help where I can.

9:32: I'm definitely not an expert at this.

9:34: I am an expert in the tough love.

9:36: So if you need a little help there, let's say that's where I can help.

9:39: Best Cheers guys.