Speaker 1hi in this episode claire and i are going to talk about building a values-led business um and by that we mean thinking about how you create a business which feels like you are connected to it that you're being drawn towards it that it fits around who you are in your identity um and that helps guide you in the decisions that you make i suppose some people might use the word authentic that could be another word way of talking about it um but i think when we talk to personal trainers particularly in things like the essentials mentoring i don't know about you claire but i feel like i have a lot of conversations with people they feel a bit stuck because they don't really know where to go next to develop their business and sometimes that's because they're looking at what other trainers do and thinking and comparing their business against that and a lot of the conversations we have is more around okay well if you didn't know what they were up to and what we were doing because thank you social media what would this want to feel like and look like for you what matters to you and in a very broad sense we'll obviously dig down a little bit deeper as we go through this but i feel like that is where these values-based conversations often begin
Speaker 2yeah absolutely i and i think sometimes it's not even that people don't know what they want to do it's that they have for whatever reason often sort of their own insecurities around things but we we're the worst at creating our own barriers right um and so you have conversations where they're like i'd like to do this but it won't work because and it's this kind of idea that they've created around what they have to do and the common ones are things like well have to sell weight loss because that's all anyone wants pt for and if i don't sell well weight loss i won't be able to have my business or um i've got to do such and such and let's face it there is such a broad range of things you could do as a pt that it's really easy to take whatever it is that is available to you and it's really easy to take whatever it is that is available isn't what you want to do and go well that's what i have to do and the reason i have to do that is because that's what people want or that's what people are going to buy and and use that as a reason to then not make progress whereas unless what you're you'd like to do is something really really obscure there's every possibility that you can build a business around it and that there is an audience out there for it and if you focus on the people that would be interested in what you want to do rather than the ones that wouldn't be interested in what you wanted to do you can build this really good business that's sustainable around what it is that that's important to you but i think we we quite often sort of doubt ourselves or doubt the ideas and then look for the evidence about why it won't work rather than kind of going all in and it's not everybody and you know i'm quite envious of the people out there who have kind of gone this is what i want to do and almost ignore any any barriers and succeed with it because it's not going to work and it's because of that um but you do have a lot of people i'd probably put myself in this second group who are more likely to kind of overanalyze overthink and and potentially get in their own way about moving things forward and i think it's that kind of stuff where the biggest problems lie um it is also a little bit like you alluded to there sometimes there is a case of i don't really know what i want to do and and that's always a little bit you can feel a bit lost with that um and that's where you know the questions and the conversations normally help us come to some kind of idea about what's important and and and if not we've always got that option of well do something and see how you feel about it because let's face it like quite often when you do something or you you start down a route if you part of you screaming that you hate every second of it it's probably not the way to go
Speaker 1right yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly and and like a lot of the time as well you might act i i think what you said there was right i think most of the time trainers do know what their values are they do know what their business identity is and but we can get lost in the mire of um things that we see other people doing that for me for me that too many ideas i i almost have the opposite problem claire i don't think hard enough about half of things i should think more about and i just go oh shiny object let's do it um and that has the capacity to really pull me in the wrong direction because i think it sounds like a great idea it looks like it might be fun i think people love it but unless i've actually gone back to the kind of the values that i'm driving my business with and therefore the um the strategy i'm following to get there i can be pulled off course i i think i might have said this analogy out loud before but if not here it is um so i collect my ideas for my business and i'm going to for the business in a spare room you know when you have that room at home where you just shove everything you know you want to keep it but also you can't have it out in public show because it's so messy and you just have too much stuff so when someone comes around you go oh just put it in the spare room and you shove it in and it turns into little doom piles of stuff and then you get to the point where you don't even want to open the door because all of that stuff is behind then you can pretend it's not there if not and so i actually end up almost with too many ideas and i'm like and i leave them all in this spare room and then over time my brain goes well we could do this we could do that we could do this and then i almost become a little bit paralyzed with all the ideas and i don't know where to go forwards and for me that's where values as decision making has been really useful so we know for example that one of our central values in our business is that we want people who come here to feel confident and so we kind of use that as a way to make sure that we're that as a central strand through everything confidence is a big value joy is another one and community is another one so when i'm looking at whether or not an idea will work i need to run it through that filter of does it fit the value of will it help them to feel confident are they going to come to that and it will increase their confidence is this something i can sell as being confidence and then that gets away from oh but we don't really do x y and z we're better known for you know classes we're better known for we don't really do yoga but we do you know it takes away from that can we add this service or this product so what what what does it offer in the value or if it offers confidence it ticks that box does it bring people together in community does it take that value yes could it be joyful absolutely i'm not doing it if it's not um but i find that little check back to our values almost like a little guiding star like that little north star that i get to follow where i go oh well if i always check in on that and then it kind of lines up as a bit of a compass against it does it check the box and if it doesn't check the box then maybe it's not something that is right for us or is right for this time yeah our values could change over time as well i'm sure yeah and i think
Speaker 2that that's it's one of those things that just it helps you go is is this right and quite often i think that this is why it's important because you your gut feel when things aren't feeling right when you're feeling a bit down about the business it's not quite there you've not got that kind of drive to do something quite often it's because you've kind of strayed from what's important to you maybe you're working with the wrong kind of people for you um nothing wrong with those individuals but it's not lining up with with what you wanted to do um or you've got too many of a certain a certain type a certain demographic or sometimes it's the right people but you've kind of found yourself wandering away from your path and you're doing something that just doesn't feel right you've got caught up in a particular the must do programming way or the this is the way you have to do your marketing or something you've kind of seen something somewhere and gone oh i need to do that and then you're you're sort of forcing yourself into a into another another structure that just doesn't feel right to you so i think it's easy to get caught up sometimes in the the technicalities of stuff even when you sit down and go right i'm going to make this i'm going to look at my values and then you can sit and look at all of these words and you you can get kind of caught up in well which ones are important and is it that one or is it that one or oh my god now i've got another list of things i can't narrow down how do i get any further than this or i've got a list of words but that doesn't really help me in any way and it it's it's so i think it depends on the type of person you are as to how you're best approaching this because for some people it's quite straightforward they look at a list of words they know which ones resonate they come up with this short list of i know three to five words and from there they can build it and take it forwards whereas for others that just leaves you a even bigger mess how do you approach it
Speaker 1how do i approach it good question um probably differently depending on who I'm working with and how much they know about it so I suppose how I found mine might be the way to start which was actually in terms of starting with my own personal values so I did start there um and I have um a pack of cards because my friend showed it to me ages ago and I loved it um which I just got on uh on the internet which is called live your values and it's too many cards but it has a it basically likes a bit like a bit of a game you go yes no maybe and you literally have to not overthink it you are not allowed to second guess if it goes in a pile it stays in the pile like that's the rules of the game right so you go yes no maybe and then you take your yes and your maybe pile and you go through your maybe pile and you double check anything that you think would move to yes and anything else is is a no and then it narrows down again so you have to find 10 of them then you have to find five of them and the most you can end with is five and five is usually a good amount of people um and and I found that really helpful way of just kind of thinking about okay what what do I what what matters to me what do I care the most about and then I was able to think which of these matter to the people who are involved in my business because actually even when I didn't have a studio it was still who it was almost a part of that who are my people who are they that are using this survey and I took those out of the values I'd chosen rather than random values because I wanted to find the alignment between me and them which is how we came to community joy confidence and um oh inclusivity is our big one that's almost like our vision though because we want to be fully inclusive in all movement and well-being activities that we offer I mean big big vision we'd like the world to be fully inclusive that's probably not entirely within our controls um and and and in a way what was funny about that process was how easy it was to look at my values and then see them represented in the people who come um how that that was like oh well yeah I mean they come because they like that chat and they like being around other people and they don't like exercising alone and that's where that community aspect came from is what keeps me going when I'm doing something that's hard and I like doing hard things but I like doing them alone and you know and like yeah like one thing that fitness gave me right from the beginning when I got into it was confidence not just to do things that are you know exercise gym related but in other areas of my life as well and oh that's what women who I work with already that's what they talk to me about how it's given them confidence how it makes them feel stronger in their mind as well as their body and and so it was really able like easy at that point to match them up um and do that and whereas I used a pack of cards because I'm a very kind of kinesthetic person um there's stuff out there as well that's like lists of words on the internet you can draw to and and one actually um someone used with me once in a session I did was just to say imagine you're way way way way way into the future um way into the future um and you are no longer with us and someone is speaking at your funeral what do they say about you what five things might they say about you how do they describe you um and that can be a useful way of thinking about it oh yeah how would they describe me oh yeah well they probably describe me as someone who really like heard about being around other people and loved being a people person that's again that's where the way so it doesn't really matter the language you use the language should be personal to you anyway the language should be something that matters to you and make sense to you but then it aligns with okay well what do the people I work with want why are they here they're not here to do a yoga class they could go everywhere anywhere to do a yoga class so why are they here they're not just here to do pt there's a million pts just in my area so why are they here what is it about them that they're looking for that they want out of it and then I've got this guiding north star I can use it to make decisions do I do I put this open day on a weekly basis that we've called community yes actually because it's a really safe way for people to feel included in our community and feel more confident about coming down like I start using that language around why they might use it and then that really helps me to to progress it forwards um and and often when I'm working with trainers that's what I say to them you know okay so what what matters to you why did you start this business what's what what is it about you that people would say if they were to talk about you behind your back nicely so I often use the case of a funeral because no one says bad things behind your back at a funeral um but also um oh we assume not anyway don't go into that um so but then um I say to them okay and what is it that you want for the people who come to you what is it you hope they go away feeling after having engaged with you in your services I think that could be a great way of working out what you want things to look like and then holding up the products you've got against it and seeing if they fit all your ideas should open another studio I don't know does it help with these values does it help me push these out into the world that sort of thing yeah
Speaker 2because that's the important bit isn't it you need the application phase because I think we've all probably seen businesses not even just not specifically PT but businesses where people have gone through sort of an exercise because they had to do an exercise and they can't like this is my list of values this is my mission statement this is my vision and that's sort of prettily typed up somewhere and then ignored completely and business can carry continues as normal I mean it's quite can be a common sort of failing particularly in larger companies because you end up with so many people involved in the business that it can easily step away from original kind of goals and thoughts and stuff there's not really the same excuse when we've got a small company if it's only you there's there's no point in going through this exercise and they're completely ignoring it and building something else it's about how these things can help you rather than doing it as some kind of business thing because you've been told you need to do this business thing it's about going well how does this help me and as you said being able to run decisions through it and use it as that that sort of filter that checklist where you can say does it do these things it's great because it it's the sort of thing that does stop you from getting caught up too much in something you've seen somebody else do that might be perfect for their clients and their business but actually doesn't work for you and yours because you've got different values you've got a different purpose in terms of where you what you want your business to do and who you want it to help even if at the really top level both businesses are aimed at people getting fitter and stronger that you can have those same real top level aims and let's face it if we're personal trainers we've all got some kind of movement led and purpose going on that's that's what we do so it's sort of below that there's still loads and loads of things that sort of separate us and there's not a hierarchy of them i mean the values you mentioned are all all ones that you kind of go that sounds very um noble and positive ones there's nothing wrong with with your values being anything else even if some of the words on their own might be ones that you'd go well i don't ever want to write up to this one that can still be a core value that's still important to you and your business so they they are there and they can still be um part of your business and none of this is about saying i don't want to earn money or things like that you know we've all got bills to pay and that so that can be one of your one of your financial security yeah so your
Speaker 1values might be i mean like to pick ones that might be construed negatively but i don't think are would be something like financial security could be a value and so actually that is a central value of your business then you that that's great that's a decision day-to-day business decision making value that you can implement in your business so i think that's a really good point into it but also it can help you around making decisions and pricing of things um for you and your clients because if financial security is important for you then perhaps it's also important for your clients um and and that's probably you know something as well that when you're communicating you can build into things well actually financial security is important to me then i'm going to give notice to any price increase that i put on and i'm going to do it this way this way and this way and it doesn't mean you don't price increase it means your price increase because your price increase is important to you and you don't price increase it means your price increase but you communicate it in a way that supports their financial security too and like individualism would be another one like maybe one reason why people come to you alone in a gym is because they don't want that sense of connecting with other people they want to get in focus on their goal get trained for it and get back out again and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that either so there is yeah absolutely i think it's really important to note there's no hierarchy in values values are personal um you know i mean if they do something they're not going to be able to do it down noble they're not meant to i'm very frivolous i always think they sound frivolous it's like let's be confident and have fun um they're not serious
Speaker 2okay maybe I was thinking more the integrity and stuff like that there's nothing there on your list that you might go I probably wouldn't want to put this front and center as something it's my business which might be something that you you'd kind of question if you were looking at that um financial security um or I mean the way you phrase it in terms of the individuality I mean you wouldn't put up there you know hate other people come train with me um well maybe you would I don't know it it definitely says this is who my audience is and I guess there's possibly quite a few of us that go actually do you know what that's refreshing maybe I'll try it but in
Speaker 1some way sorry I was
Speaker 2gonna say if you have those kind of things those are the ones sometimes where people you do feel difficult because everywhere you're reading stuff you're reading things about community and you're reading about the benefits of being with other people and if there's a bit of you going do you know what I hate people um you're reading things about community and you're reading about the benefits of being with other people then I mean if you really hate people you're in the wrong job but if you don't want to be part of a group that's a different thing and you just you find the positives for the situation rather than the sort of reverse of that and go with oh these are the these are the bad
Speaker 1things but I think also so I I think we learned a lesson recently we had been maybe using our values as a branding exercise far too much more so than they were a decision-making exercise so we kind of almost got caught up in the fact that a couple of things hadn't picked up and why weren't they picking up and I think part of that is because we're almost driving this community aspect too more because you're absolutely right what if I don't want to talk to other people what if I'm worried I won't fit in what if and so if we communicate that too much then actually it's not it's not really driving what we do do which is strength and confidence so we I think it's important that they're decision-making filters more so than the fact that we're not really than their branding filters as such you can then think about how do I present it to the world
Speaker 2yeah and that's where again sometimes you see it misused and your example there's perfect because it's really easy to get caught up in the values because they are important to you and you've nailed them and you're going like great that's what my business is going to be about and you start marketing your values rather than your service and underlying all of it people aren't coming to you and they're not coming to you and they're not coming to you and they're not coming to you because of those things their key reason for coming to a gym in the first place is probably something to do with getting some movement into their life whether that's you know for whatever reason mobility feeling fitter feeling strong whatever that's what they want that's the core service now the reason they're choosing you and not somebody else is because they like the environment they like your approach your ethos all of that kind of stuff so that that's important too it's really easy sometimes to get caught up in the other stuff and put that that becomes all of our messages become about about that and it's kind of like community and and that's great and yes community can be good but equally I could get community by going to the pub it doesn't involve exercise it has a completely different outcome to me going to a gym I mean community there and and so your decision making on what you want to do is going to be completely different and you can't get too caught up in things and forget that your core service is going to be something to do with movement exercise whatever it is that that you you do working with the people you want to work with and so it's it's weaving the values information more in the sort of periphery and the way you do things but remembering this is the key thing I'm selling here I am selling the opportunity to come here and exercise in this format in this place with with these
Speaker 1people yeah that's it exactly it's like the value should recreate clarity around the decisions that you make the services that you have and the like you said weave their way into how you're putting it out there but essentially yeah like what do we offer how do we offer it why would you come here they all pull together and yeah I don't want to be a part of their community um but actually and and it's easy to create things that promote that community that from within but that's more about the culture you've created and the culture that people see as opposed to actually what you're selling like you said you're still selling PT group PT fitness classes whatever it is um and and certainly like we've we've kind of taken a little course correction on that and gone right we need to remember these these are our decision making elements these are our clarity these are the things that we pull in and go is this on the right track is it aligned yes it is perfect and if it feels wrong then it's one of the things we can check in with go why does this feel wrong what's happening here what are we not doing that aligns with the identity that we've created in this business and and when you are so clear on that identity apart from taking a few missteps along the way because you can get a little bit too engrossed in it but it does it does automatically almost feel right or wrong and then you can go back to them and go uh maybe what it's not doing is fulfilling this criteria that I have just here maybe this is actually not working for us because x y and z so I feel like they're helpful little check-ins little clarity drivers little uh road maps almost um but yeah I don't think they should be your whole branding um it's not necessarily what you're communicating to the outside world
Speaker 2no and I think one of the one of the places it can be really helpful is when you're bringing somebody else into your business if you've got staff or you're outsourcing something you know your marketing or sales calls or even your admin kind of processes you want people that are going to be aligned to what your service and your values are and they've got to understand that so that they're not giving out sort of conflicting information or it's the way they speak all of that kind of stuff they've got to be aligned to what your business represents because otherwise you've got a problem so it's it's one of those things I think quite often when you take somebody on and then you realize it's not quite working if you go back to your values you can be like oh this is why it's not working and even from our point of view um I mean hopefully you do have the situation and so when it is your own business that you've sort of wandered away from it but you also get that sometimes like you know when you work somewhere and you you kind of like think this isn't why isn't it working and it's probably through those kind of situations that you're able to kind of really aware of what's important to me because it's almost when you're pushed into these situations where it's not quite what you know feels good to you that you're able to go oh this is why this is this is the thing that's clashing sort of internally with me and why I don't feel happy um in this place and that kind of stuff so when you've got those oh hang on a sec it's a good place to go back to I think whether it's you with somebody else or um within your business or it's you know if you're working for somebody else and it's their business and it's not working you might want to look at it and go well actually we don't really align and and is this something that I can live with or is this something where I'm better off looking elsewhere and finding something that does line up closer to what I want and who I want to work with and how I or the way I want to work it's not always about the demographic quite often it's the sort of way the communications go out or the way some of the sort of behind the scenes stuff happens or the kind of other things that make oh yeah I mean most most of us by the time you get to a certain age have probably had a boss at some point for whom you were kind of like yeah this doesn't really gel and there's some sort of clash here um or somebody or been in a business with with somebody in that way where you're kind of like yeah this isn't this isn't right and then you have to make a decision whether it's enough of an impact on you that you go somewhere else or whether it's something you just live with because they don't have a direct um influence on your day-to-day or whatever it
Speaker 1is so that's it like I imagine like if someone came here and they had really strong values of discipline ambition hard work they would find that like a little bit of a rub against us going joy confidence burn like do you know what I mean like we we do have uh an environment that is not about drilling down getting into the nitty-gritty and getting like the one percent out of someone that is not what we do and I imagine if someone came here and wanted to work in an environment like that which I can understand like you know if you're really driven and you love that kind of thing we would not be the place for you and so I imagine like equally if I went into an environment like that it's a place I would struggle our values don't always align with one another and sometimes it can help us understand why we don't feel quite right in their environment we're working in or or even I suppose if it is our business with a client that has come in and we're working it with you know why why why isn't this working I like them they're a nice person but for some reason we're not gelling I wonder if you went to those values and had a look their values and your values would be quite far away from one another it can explain a lot sometimes
Speaker 2it's those times when you sort of feel you're clashing with people or you you're annoyed at somebody because they don't respect your time or they're doing something that's not right in some way it's normally those kind of things I think where you know if you dig down to it it's not that they don't respect you they're not doing it because of you they're doing it because that's just how they are and it's just how they are on this particular thing doesn't match how you are on this particular thing and and let's say so we all do it we kind of project our own thoughts and it's kind of well I would never do that then if I did that I'd feel like I was it was a bad thing to be doing and that person's doing that to me so clearly they don't care when that's just not an important thing in their life um and so they're oblivious and we've created this whole um whole sort of plot that they've they've been actively following to to be disrespectful or to to do this negative thing when yeah they're just oblivious
Speaker 1yeah and I think if you if you look at it from a values perspective it helps you to make that decision then as to whether you say to them I don't think this is the right relationship for us um I I don't think this is the right place for me I don't think this you know you can say no to things easier when you understand that it's not that they're a bad person or you're a bad person you don't make it personal to either person you just clash in this area of values and you're not aligned there because if you're not aligned you're not aligned with the other person and you're not aligned then it's not going to work for either of you so it makes it much easier to make those decisions much much easier to say no more easily I wish I understood values in my 20s so much more than I understand 20 years on from that now because the amount of stuff I felt pressured into doing when I first started in a work environment and and places that I felt like I just didn't fit into I look back now and I just think they were just different values we were just you know poles apart from it and I would always feel like I was just not going to be able to do it about saying no or not following through on doing something and actually it just wasn't the right environment um and and that that can be you know great for clients too when they they walk into a place if your values are embedded by you and your staff if everyone understands what they are they'll be felt you don't really need to say out loud to anybody who's a client what they are they'll be felt they'll be there in the culture and they'll feel right or they won't as the case may be yeah I
Speaker 2think I mean there's not anything where there's any hard and fast rules but things looking out for those sort of normal language that we sort of see as potential flags things like should be doing and and that kind of thing can really help particularly if you're kind of should be doing this but it just doesn't feel feel right and particularly when you're looking at your service and stuff I mean I know we kind of um have spoken before about that that kind of idea when it comes up quite a lot of this kind of trainers who have to do weight loss um and and and double down then on this idea and sort of all their the proof that they're finding because that's all they're looking for sort of reinforces that rather than as I said before looking at the the people who aren't interested in weight loss and well look there's this whole audience here who aren't interested so how about I focus on them and who I can work with and what they want and how my service could work for them if that's the way you want to go and it's not saying weight loss is wrong it's just that kind of like if that's not what you want to do you don't have to um in the same way as there's you know trainers who kind of like want to build their business around a particular aspect maybe they're very much into yoga or dance-based fitness or martial arts or they love running or cycling or whatever it is and like I want to build my business around this aspect of weight movement and it's like well you you can nobody says that you can't there isn't a big enough audience for any of those things so you've got you can build an audience around that and go well this is my my business for most of us depending on your structure you don't actually need that many clients I mean you've got a massive facility then you're going to need a lot of clients but if you're a one-to-one personal trainer 20 to 30 probably ish if you're um small group again you maybe it's a different number but you're not looking at I need you know thousands of people so once you start looking at the numbers you really need and then look in your local area there's probably enough of them there to do what you need your business to do to make it sustainable and to give you the financial security and everything that you want that's it
Speaker 1something that's sustainable easily be something that's scalable so to speak it's the sustainability of your business right that's important and the decision making that you've got there leaves you feeling like you enjoy what you do within it it is more sustainable instantly because it's something that you're not putting so much emotional labor into you're actually able to you know be present within it enjoy it not feel like it's taking everything out of you um I just thought of a a good example actually of how we used one of our values recently um so we have memberships in our classes um and we were looking at changing things around that so um as a good example um of what happened eventually is we decided we needed to put more strict um cancellation policy in place because we're getting much more frequent cancellations than we've ever had before part that's probably to do with weather and dark nights and things like that but it has increased even from the year before at this time of year so we track all those kinds of metrics all the time we had a chat as directors about what could we do that would help to create more sustainability in these classes um because it's important to us that we can keep our instructors we like them the members like them um you know they they offer something more diverse um you know is is it that we shouldn't be offering yoga and pilates because they're the ones that are lower levels and there's lots of yoga and pilates studios in the local area should we do in fitness but that's not sustainable because we don't have enough instructors that can offer that those are all the questions right you go through everything and um the other question that we had was well do we change our membership structure and we decided at the point we implemented it that membership was the best way forward to run classes but a lot of the local yoga studios and pilates studios use the rent payment system where instructors rent the room and then offer the class themselves and then you know exactly what income you've got coming in from those instructors and then you know exactly what income you've got coming in from those instructors who are renting the space then they have the issue of doing the marketing and all the rest of it so you you put the onus on them big discussion went through the different models looked at all the different things and what helped us in the end make the final decision was one of our values that's very central to what we do is community do we get the same community if we rent the room to the instructor instructor they do the marketing they do the outreach they put the class on and choose the time and everything and it's when it's not necessarily consistent and members then just pay as you go and don't necessarily see the same people all the time and so on and so forth and the answer was no we don't get the community that we've created through that model so we want to keep what we've created so we have to find another way of helping to create that more sustainable model and that was we've increased our cancellation so they have to cancel with more time before and you know what it works we didn't tell them all that background i mean if they're listening to this they've just heard it but our communication didn't say community is important to us our community our community can't speak now our communication said our instructors are super important to us and we want to be able to keep increasing the amount we pay them in line with what is being offered commercially at the moment and the only way we can do that is to actually know that the people are in the classes and not cancelling immediately before they happen so we are going to increase their pay and we're going to increase your cancellation notice and we hope you understand and everyone went oh my goodness yes i mean i'll definitely come and they were really keen to keep those classes running and to keep coming because we didn't have to say community because community is important to them but they also love that class and they want it to stay on the timetable and they want it to be there so we were able to communicate in a way we knew our members would understand we were able to make the decision in a way that made sure that we held with our values that meant that it felt like we weren't pulling against anything and that we were able to sustain what we offer right now for longer into the future
Speaker 2brilliant yeah it's a perfect example I think of where it's, where and how you've used it. And, uh, and sums up perfectly some of the stuff we've said then about, you know, not necessarily having to list it out and not making it all about that thing, but it being woven into the background of, uh, of what you do, which then makes it an awful lot easier because you, you stop trying to second guess everything against theoretical possible maybes. And you've got, no, this is important to me. So it's got to, it's got to fit here as your, as your kind of like core to go back to every time.
Speaker 1Yeah. Well, we find, we find, and I think a lot of people do, we find the money part of things difficult. We always joke and we'll say we're really bad at capitalism, but actually we want to be bad at capitalism because we don't like it. Commerce is fine. Capitalism is not. But that, that, that's our values, right? And other people would think differently to that, but we find that difficult then because that whole idea. That whole idea of taking money, increasing money, changing cancellation times, which would impact someone's payment for a class, all that sort of thing, we find hard. It became less hard. It became something we weren't fighting against when instead we looked at it from our values perspective. What's important to us, community? How do we create that community? We have people come to classes, we have instructors that they know and they feel comfortable and confident with. How do we keep that going? We keep it going like this. Now it's not about how. How much we're charging or impact we're having financially on people. It's about making sure that that can continue because we know that's what we want and that's what they want.
Speaker 2Perfect. I think that's probably a good place to wrap up, isn't it? I think that's perfectly demonstrated what we were talking about. Very good. I'm so glad I suddenly thought of that. Literally what have you been doing, Maggie? Should have started with that, but then it would have been a really short podcast. It would. So, you know, we can't have that. And yeah, we'll have to come up with something else for our next chat. As always, lovely chatting. You too.
PodcastTranscript AI