Laura Munkholm:
Okay. Welcome, everyone. We are just about to get started. Give it a few minutes because I know we have lots of people registered for this, and we will, uh, get started by 09:31. I promise. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for joining us today. We are just about to get started. For those of you that are joining right now, if you wouldn't mind, please just pop into the chat and introduce yourselves. You can share, um, what kind of business you have and where you're coming from. That would be awesome. It's nice to know who we're speaking with today. Okay. Alright. Desi, if you wanna unshare your screen, we can jump into welcome everybody to the presentation. Okay. I know we will have lots of people popping in over the next couple of minutes, but thank you to all of you who are here on time with us today. Uh, welcome to our monthly Walla webinar series. My name is Laura Moncolm, and I'm one of the founders here at Walla. And I'm so excited to have everyone here to learn about unlocking your capacity and team potential today. We have Desi Galliard Young here today, and she is honestly somebody I am so honored to have in this webinar series. I feel like lately we have just had some of the most amazing guests, and you are somebody I've had on my list for a long time, Desi. So thank you for joining us today. Um, I'm gonna be going through just a couple of quick housekeeping items before we actually kick off on the content. So as I mentioned just a moment ago, please once you jump in, introduce yourselves in the chat. It's nice to know who we've got and really helps us shape the content as we're having the conversation, um, what kind of business you have. Actually, if you wouldn't mind today, would you pop in and write how many employees you have or how many staff members you have at your studio business? Um, I think that's really gonna help us as we talk about the dynamics of the team, and I'm sure, Desi, you're gonna appreciate knowing the different sizes of businesses we have here today. Um, don't be alarmed if you don't see yourself on screen. This is webinar style, so you're not going to see your face here. It's really just us presenting some content to you, but that doesn't mean we don't want your interaction. So please please please ask questions as we go. Um, I'll be watching the chat. I'll be watching the q and a and, um, feeding that information to Desi so that we can, you know, if it's in context that it makes sense to answer questions or, you know, wait till she finishes a thought and then dive into conversation around it, that will be absolutely fine. So if something is on your mind, please share. And then just generally, we are excited to hear your feedback afterwards. So if you have any thoughts, any ideas, any questions afterwards, Desi's going to be sharing her contact information and how to get in touch with her. Um, she has a wealth of knowledge on this topic and lucky for us has been doing some consulting in the space now, so if you are just totally enthralled and want to know more and want to bring her expertise into your business, she will be available to contact. Um, so without further ado, I am going to turn it over to you, but welcome Bethany, welcome April, April and April, Kathleen. Kathy, it's so good to see you. I know we will have quite a few more people jumping in over the next few minutes, but, uh, Desi, thank thank you. I'll let you introduce yourselves and take it from here.

Desiree Guilliard-Young:
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Laura, for the kind words, for the opportunity. Walla is a business model and partners and friends in the industry that I fully support and love. And this has been a long time coming.

Laura Munkholm:
Yeah. It really has.

Desiree Guilliard-Young:
I'm very glad that we're finally able to knock this webinar out and to very much talk about a topic of mine or a conversation that's top line rather for so many of you in the industry regardless of role or modality or type of studio that you currently own. And so we'll be spending about 45 minutes together. To Laura's point, we want this to be interactive. And so if something doesn't make sense, if you have a question, please please please make sure you're funneling that information to Laura and team through the chat. But I really wanna spend the first few minutes of the presentation talking a little bit about this journey that we're gonna be on for the next forty five minutes. Um, we want the conversation to be thought provoking. I want the conversation to be engaging. And furthermore, I want to challenge all of you to shift your understanding and perspective and be open to alternative mindsets and strategies as it pertains to talent sourcing, retention, and talent management. I think historically as an industry and within business, we've been very top down focused in terms of priority levels and emphasis and how we attract talent, how we mold certain skill sets within our employees, how we approach people leadership in general. But the dynamics of the workforce have shifted, especially since COVID. And I think we all have seen as owners and operators and experienced that pretty directly. And so in order to stay current, in order to capitalize and capture that quality tanner talent, we have to adjust. We have to shift. We have to transition from traditional strategies and mindsets to more collaborative, proactive ways of approaching talent management and sourcing. And so before we get into what we're gonna discuss during our forty five minute journey, I wanna take a second to talk a little bit briefly about me, which I don't normally enjoy doing. But I wanna spend some time talking about my background because I think it's important to understand who you're getting your knowledge from and their expertise and experience, but also their methodology and approach when it comes to specific topics or owning and operating a studio. And so for me, I started my career in corporate America. I spent just under twelve years working for companies, Fortune 500 companies like AT and T and ADP, managing easily hundreds of thousands of employees in various capacities. And so think traditional sales leadership, HR, leadership development, operations, call center support. And in those roles, I cut my teeth. I got to understand business from multiple facets, be able to not only get into the weeds of certain divisions, but have the capacity to step back and look at business at a micro level. And you learn a lot about leadership and talent management when you have a diverse background. And that perspective equipped me with the necessary tools to then transition into the boutique fitness space. And so around 2020, in January we all know what happened in March but around twenty twenty January, I decided to transition away from corporate America. I escaped, as some of us like to say. And it was one of those situations where it was the right opportunity in the right time. I had been a silent owner in Sanctuary Fitness for about three years at that time, and my founder and business partner that I've known for well over twenty some odd years had been actively engaging and touching base and trying to recruit me to come on board full time and run all of people management and operations and HR for the business, but the time wasn't right. And so finally, I decided to take a leap of faith. And in January 2020, I made the move from Atlanta to Los Angeles. And then March happened, and COVID happened. And we spent the next two years, like all of you, navigating all of the nuances and challenges that COVID presented to our business and our industry. One of which was, what do we do with our people? How do we pivot quickly and be thoughtful about how we're managing our team? And we managed to not only survive but thrive. We had to get thrifty and be agile in terms of our approach. Um, but we went from a two location business boutique fitness concept with maybe two modalities to four locations, 7 figures, well over 50 employees in the span of those three or so years. And one of the reasons we were able to successfully do that was our approach and intentionality behind talent attraction, retention, and development, which we'll talk about. But after about that four year period of COVID, three year period of COVID, we were approached by a VC firm and had the opportunity to then sell to that firm. And that firm now owns and is the parent company of Sanctuary Fitness. And so we've been through multiple iterations as a company. True startup one location, scaling and growing startup with three to four, and then the exiting strategy and managing the change management that's associated with selling your business to a VC firm or private investor. And throughout that entire process, my primary focus was the quality of the product, the brand identity, and most importantly, our intentionality behind our people and how all of these changes, all of these strategic business decisions impacted the people that are responsible for actually executing the strategy that we're putting in place. And so you'll see a quote in the margin on the left hand side. It's something that is a part of my core values as a leader. I firmly believe that people are the most valuable asset of a company. Some will say it's the experience or the product or the brand identity, but none of that comes to life without your frontline employees, your first level managers executing at a very high level and consistently. And so today, we're gonna spend some time digging into that strategy. What is talent management sourcing and retention strategy? What does that need to look like for businesses that are our size in our space but within our budget? Right? Because we are not fortune 500 companies with unlimited capacity. And, again, my only rule is that we really open our perspective and minds and start to shift how we've traditionally viewed talent sourcing, retention, and attraction. And this presentation is a compilation of my sixteen years of industry experience both within the boutique space for about five or six and then also within corporate America. Right? So you're getting all of this knowledge free of charge. First recession's always free. Sharing all this with you because I don't believe in hoarding information. I don't believe in gatekeeping. It's important that we share best practices and information so that the collective industry can thrive. And so today, we'll be talking about data points and strategies, but all within the realm of talent development and talent management. So we'll spend some time talking about current state and where we are today as an industry. We'll transition to methodology shifts and some of the best practices and approaches that we need to be thinking about as owners, operators, and people leaders, we'll dive into culture cultivation and talent retention, and then we'll close with talking a little bit about sourcing strategies and open it up for q and a. Unless something is just burning and you need to interject or ask a question mid presentation, which we want you to do. And so I want to kick off our time together by level setting and talking a little bit about current state. Where are we? Where is our industry? I found some of my favorite and most compelling statistics and put them together in an infogram to just illustrate where we are, where the environment is today as it pertains to talent management and retention. We are in the great detachment phase. People are leaving at an exponentially high rate. Brand loyalty, employee loyalty is at an all time low. Morale is at an all time low. A lot of that is tailwind from the experience of COVID. Right? Lots of isolation, a lot of unknowns, a lot of fear and anxiety. And people bring that version of themselves to work, and it impacts your ability as leaders to really get in and manage. Um, but it's a part of the human experience, and it's something that we have to be mindful of. But some statistics that I found that were really, really eye opening and resonated with me was that two in 10 employees believe that they don't have a clear path forward within their organizations for growth. And that might seem insignificant, but if you've got an employee base that's in the twenties and thirties, those numbers add up. And anyone that's not engaged is a hindrance to your success. Anyone that can't see themselves building a future with the company and progressing is a potential churn or loss that you'll have to restaff. Another statistic that I found by just, you know, leveraging data from Studio Grove and BFS is we have high turnover rates for our industry. 40% to 60% on average is what people see. And it's not seasonal. It's not one off turnover. It's consistent. And so the question we should be asking ourselves is why are people leaving, and what can we proactively do to prevent that? K? Another trend that I saw in the data was managerial effectiveness. People I've always said being in HR, people don't leave jobs or companies. They leave leadership. And so if you were experiencing high turnover on a specific team within your organization, I would challenge you to take a step back and really evaluate the effectiveness and the tools and the toolkit of your management team. Because I've been in situations as a Thrifty owner and operator where you couldn't compete compensation wise with the Equinoxes and the Berries of the world, um, and we paid our best and came up with creative ways to engage and keep people bought in. And I've also been in environments where we've had all of the resources and everything is working in the employees' favor and benefit, and people have exited the business. And so typically, in my experience, if you have someone churn or you have high volume of churn in a department or organization, it's typically tied to a leadership disconnect. There's something amiss between how that leader is executing and inspiring those employees and how that's being received by the individual employees. Another statistic that will reign home for everyone is that eighty five percent of business owners are struggling with this topic. 85% of y'all need help mastering how to inspire, how to source, how to retain, how to develop your talent. And that's a huge percentage. Right? And so we're gonna spend some time really digging in and breaking down strategies and best approaches. But I think the key to remember is that we are dealing with a very diverse demographic in workforce, not just from a representation, ethnicity, gender, pronoun perspective, but also generationally. Generationally, Gen z and millennials make up more than 60% of the workforce today. That's a huge percentage. And what they fundamentally want in employers and in a work experience is drastically different than generation x or the boomer generation. And so as leaders, we have to understand those nuances. We have to pivot our approach and tweak our approach and strategy to be as effective as possible. Gone are the days where the employee shifts for the employer. That was my generation. I'm an 84 baby. Typically, don't talk about age, HR, and me. But I am an older millennial, and our strategy and culture growing up and in business in the beginning of my career was that managers and leadership in the organization sets the tone, and you would hear. And that's just how it is. You don't really get a voice. You just put your head down and work. But that dynamic has shifted. Employees want to have some sort of involvement in connection to what's happening in the company. They want to be able to have an element of diversity of thought. They pride themselves in being in organizations where they can actually add tangible value. And so if we're not adjusting, there is going to be a disconnect. You're going to see that churn. Gone are the days where the employer is the priority. Now the employee is. And I would challenge all of you if servant leadership is something that's new or uncomfortable. There are ton of resources that I can share with the group after the fact to help you close that knowledge gap. But your mindset should be, what do I have to do each day to ensure that my employees are set up for success? What roadblocks, what infrastructure, what processes, what support, what training, what development opportunities do I need to have in place so that my employees feel like they can bring their best version of themselves to work. And I get the end product in terms of the experience or the quality of the class or the instruction level that I'm going for. And if we don't shift to that mindset, you will end up doing more work and being in the weeds of the day to day than you want to be. So let's talk about how we pivot. Okay? The reactive versus the proactive approach. Like I stated before, our industry has historically responded to churn or responded to negative employee service or employee ratings and surveys data, or we've responded to HR complaints and disgruntled employees. I would challenge you all to get ahead of that with strategy and intentionality. And so as leaders, we have to fundamentally understand what's important to our employee base and anticipate future need, right, and build strategy to support that. And so we'll talk about ways during this presentation to really shift your approach if you're currently in a reactive state. But proactive should be where your mindset is as it pertains to developing talent, developing leadership qualities within your core employee base, really fine tuning their skills and setting them up for success. Because if we don't react, we will be fighting tailwinds. Our entire careers, our entire tenure of a business. And so servant leadership versus the other versions where it's a little bit more top down, and then really being intentional about what we're doing, why we're doing it, and if it makes sense, being able to pivot quickly. And so I want the group to really sit with these questions and take a screenshot, save this video, or save this photo and image. The slides will be available to everyone after the presentation so that you can really dig into some of these concepts with your team. But I really want you to think about not only yourselves, but with your direct reports, your manager teams, anyone that's in a people leading position. Take the time to think about what inspires them and ask. What are your employees' value? What excites them about coming to work every day? But also, what dims their life? What things or processes make their lives more cumbersome that they wish they didn't have to deal with or experience? What exactly are we doing as managers to prepare every leader at every position in our organization for success? It doesn't just start with the onboarding process. Development is ongoing. It should be something that you're doing at a consistent cadence, whether it's monthly, bimonthly, quarterly. I know we all have very high expectations and performance targets for our businesses, but you can't get to the revenue goals if your people aren't executing. And so you have to prioritize that and bake in time. Are we preparing the leaders that we have in our organization? Do your managers really know how to effectively manage? Have you set aside time to give them a baseline standard foundational skill set training on what good and what excellent looks like when it comes to effective management leadership. What infrastructure do you have in place? Are you doing things via paper process? Do applications have too many clicks? What can you streamline in terms of what you're using operationally to make your employee experience easier and more effective? Are your goals, a, attainable and, b, clearly defined? And are you just focusing on revenue and activity? Because if you are, you're really missing an opportunity to connect with your employees at a deeper level. And then where are your gaps? You know, one of the things that I love about the workforce that we had at my prior business that we sold, Sanctuary Fitness, was that we hired with intention. I didn't want a bunch of individuals that thought and looked at problems and have the same background that I did because we would get a homogeneous product in terms of our business. I wanted people that filled my gaps where their strengths were my weaknesses and that felt empowered to share their ideas because we value diversity of thought. And some of our best ideas came from that collaborative process of pulling people in and asking their opinion. And some of the risk that we were able to avoid also came from those conversations. And so are you talking to your people? Are you talking to your team? If you're an owner and operator, are you taking the time to touch base not only with your clients to understand the product, but with your front desk staff, with your sales staff, with your instructors on at least two or three times a year. It doesn't have to be a weekly or monthly thing, but those skip level conversations are extremely important for you to understand and keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on in your business. And then do we understand the strengths of our people? Are we aware of that? Are we recruiting to fill gaps? And then what motivates through performance for your team? You know, what can you put together? What competitive compensation packages or structure can you put together to drive and motivate and incentivize behaviors that you wanna see within the organization? And then lastly, what are you doing today that needs to stop? What isn't working? And those skip level meetings, those town hall conversations, those one on one coffee dates, those are gonna be the conversations that help you understand. Okay. In my mind as an owner and operator, I thought this was working, but really it's not resonating. Really it's creating more harm than good.

Laura Munkholm:
Yeah. I'm gonna just interject there really quickly, Desi, because I think the the point of talking to your people is often I think I should say, it's not overlooked. It's often assumed that you're on the same page as your staff because you talked about your core values when they came they were onboarded or you set expectations on day one. People need the constant conversation, but everybody's evolving, everybody's learning. When they get into the job, things change. So those conversations become so powerful if they're consistent. And I just remember time after time learning things about my staff or learning that they thought something was the expectation when it was something different and being like, Oh my gosh, how did we miscommunicate there? You know? Unless you ask the questions, you're never gonna know that and everybody's gonna feel like there's failure around them. Um, but fun example of that is I was pushing this commission structure for so long as my, like, KPIs, here's the goal, here's the commission. And when I actually stepped back because it wasn't working and said, guys, what do you want? Like, what motivates you? What is it gonna be? The team, vast majority of the team, want clothes from my boutique. And so I shifted my commission to be like a shopping day in our boutique if you hit the heels. And I will tell you the amount of effort that they put in to get yoga pants over, you know, the commission was so different. And I never would have known that unless I had the conversation and asked. Because to me, I'm like money is money, right? But it wasn't to them.

Desiree Guilliard-Young:
That no. That's an excellent illustration. I think it's important as leaders to not be afraid to be wrong. Mhmm. To not be afraid to pivot. To not be afraid to say to your people because it establishes credibility and trust with them, hey. My thoughts behind this strategy were x, but the outcome was y. My bad. I made a mistake. Let's pivot to x, and here's how it's gonna impact you, and I want your input. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being transparent and vulnerable in that way. And your people will cling to it. They'll be drawn to it, and they'll establish a sense of credibility and trust within your core team. But the leaders that I see that fail are the leaders that always have the answer, that are ego driven, that have never heard the word no. Everyone caters to their opinion. They're not collaborative. They don't think about ideas that are might be different than what they would come up with historically. And so that flexibility, that adaptability, and that transparency is extremely important when leading people, especially the Generation Zs and Millennials in the workplace today. And I don't know if this was on Instagram or I follow all the things on LinkedIn and Instagram, so I never know where information is truly coming from sometimes because we get so much through so many different mediums. But I remember seeing a video, I believe to be on Instagram. It was maybe a seven or eight year old boy talking to an adult on the street. And she said, you know, they're talking about just goals and focus and priority. And this young man was wise behind beyond his years. But he said, you can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails. And I said, Now if that isn't a leadership quote, or a leadership quote, I don't know what it is. But it's so true, and it applies to so many different areas of our lives and in business. You cannot control the wind. We cannot control the economy. We cannot control inflation. We cannot control consumer demand or client personas. We cannot control those things. But we can control how we adjust our sales. And so being able to pivot and be agile and work in sprints and change direction quickly yet effectively is extremely important. Now I wanna spend some time talking about values. I know we all have them. They're probably plastered in certain work rooms, in our studio, in our handbook. But it's extremely important that our values be more than just something that's printed on a sheet of paper. This needs to be immersed in every layer of your organization and in everything that you do. Because what I can tell you about young Millennials and Gen Zers and Generation Alphas, even though they haven't entered the workforce yet, is that they care and pay attention to the authenticity of the company. If you as leaders or you as an organization have values that you're not walking out, that's the quickest way to see someone leave an organization. Because their values that they're sold during the onboarding process, that's a part of the compelling value proposition for them to join the company. And so if you're not walking them out, if they're just on paper, if they're just in your mind, you're missing an opportunity to really connect with those employees at a deeper level. And so rule number one, document them. Rule number two, talk about them often and at least incorporate them into the conversations that you're having with your team every week. I know that sounds excessive, but there are really small, easy, practical ways to apply that. It could be as you're giving feedback or coaching. It could be during a coaching conversation. It could be during recognition. Maybe your instructor that's new and only been on for thirty days really did an excellent job. You could be like, you know, I saw you. You know, we pride ourselves on the experience and you really walked out value five. Um, find creative ways to incorporate your values on a daily, weekly basis because repetition is important for that muscle memory for your team. But they have to be documented. They have to be documented. They have to be something as well that you're actively living out and executing consistently. And you want to also incorporate the team in these values. When I started with Sanctuary Fitness full time, we didn't we had values in our handbook, but we didn't have them outside of that. No one could really tell me what they were. And we sat down as a team and defined, what do we want to focus on? What are things that are important to us that we want to have as our culture as a core team? And we came up with five. And I took those five concepts and built from there. And this was a part of not only performance reviews, audition reviews, coach observations to make sure that quality was in check, weekly meetings, the onboarding process for any new hire. We reiterated these values to establish that muscle memory. But you have to define them. They have to be specific, and you have to have something that you're actually walking out versus something that's just on a piece of paper in the workroom. Right? And next slide. There we go. So values, that's a part of culture. That's a part of your brand identity. But your true brand identity, what you do, why you do it, what is your message, what is your external presentation to your clients, the world, you know, what are you about at your core as an organization, that plays a part in team cohesion, retention, and sourcing as well. Because if I'm joining a team, I wanna know what they stand for. If I'm joining an organization or stepping into a new role, I want to have some idea of what to expect culturally. What is my day in the life gonna look like? What is every day when I show up and might have to teach class? What can I expect culturally and experience wise? And so your values and your brand identity, but from the perspective of the employer, they impact those things. And so you wanna be clear. You want to be concise. You want to make sure it ties into the overall mission and goals of the company, both short and long term. And you have to spell it out. You absolutely have to spell it out. And repetition, again, that muscle memory is extremely important. Your team needs to know the expectation. If you don't set a baseline, it's really difficult to hold any employee base to a performance standard or expectation. So you want to make sure that that baseline and foundation is clearly defined and established. And the past two slides are illustrations of what I've created for Sanctuary. Right? This was literally in their onboarding packet. And they spent three and a half hours with me in a room with all of their other new hires for that month or that week going over in a very collaborative workshop environment all of our values, job expectations, any and everything that you can think of from start to finish, including compliance training. And that wasn't it. It didn't stop there. We had milestones and other tasks that we checked in on or completed throughout their first one hundred and twenty days. But sitting down and having this slide, having them read it, having them reflect, then telling me what resonated with them, not just on the grand slide but with the core values, having the CEO come in and talk to them about the purpose behind Sanctuary and why he created the company. Those were things that we did to really establish brand connection with the employees, to figure out very quickly who was bought in and who was bought out during those onboarding processes and and meetings, but also to reiterate why are we here? What are we doing this for? On those days where you're exhausted and you're, you know, doing your your fifth or your sixth opening shift for the morning and you're tired and you don't have the motivation to get on time or you wanna cut corners, this is what reminds them not to do so. This is the purpose behind the standard and the execution. And there has to be a point in their process, at least at the beginning, but I would encourage you to do it frequently, where they understand the meaning behind how you operate the brand and why you focus on the things that you focus on as an organization. It can't just be about the revenue. Now as business owners, we have rent, we have operating costs, we have assets, we have so much that our employees don't see. And it's not within their wheelhouse nor within their scope of responsibility to ever have that look behind the veil or fully understand. But at the same time, this directly impacts your ability to reach your revenue goals and KPIs. Because if you don't have engaged employees that are fully bought in, it leads to operational breakdowns. It leads to missed targets.

Laura Munkholm:
One thing I was gonna just quick super quick, um, throw in there is I find, personally, people don't connect with words. Like, they'll see words, they'll read words. They connect to stories behind those things. Like, everything that you have there and how the brand operates, everything with core values, relate that to a person. Right? Like, a a person whose life was changed at your business because of that core value or an experience somebody had because of core value x, and or an employee how an employee's, you know, experience was impacted. So I I think the power of story and humanizing those values and and this operational practice make it land and make it memorable. A thousand percent. That's such a good call out. And engage your team. We'll talk about talent sourcing best practices towards the end of the presentation, but one of the things that we had as a requirement is you have to meet with at least two peers. We'll pay for the coffee. We'll pay for your time. But you have to go have a peer interview outside

Desiree Guilliard-Young:
of the studio, one on one or two on one, where you can ask these questions. Like, is this really what the company is about? Like, what do these values and these and these brand identity and these goals mean to you? And so giving employees, whether they're current or new employees, the entire the opportunity to actually live out these values and express their journey and their experience is extremely important. So five reasons why people quit. We're transitioning now to culture and talent management and what we can proactively do to reduce churn in that 40 to 60% that we saw at the beginning of the presentation. But it's really simple. The top four reasons why people quit, lack of development and growth opportunities, poor management, job satisfaction or just general engagement might be low, and compensation and benefits. Now, when we talk about each of these, and culture, culture being the fifth of course, but when we talk about each of these components, these are also, and I didn't put this on the slide intentionally, these are also the five reasons that people are attracted to a business as well. And so you can lose talent or gain talent by your ineffectiveness in managing these five areas or your effectiveness in managing these five areas. And so I really want all of you to hopefully walk away from this presentation, go back to your respective teams and say, okay. Let's dig in and assess current state. How are we doing with career growth and development internally? How is our management team? Are they effective? Is the team responding? Are people satisfied and happy and feel engaged at work? Is our compensation competitive and fair for the work that people are doing? And what is our culture? Those should be additional, like, strategy meetings that you all have before the end of the year so that if there's anything that you need to do to course correct, you can do so quickly. But lack of career growth and development. So generation z and young millennials, they need progression. They want to learn. They're hungry for additional responsibility and knowledge. And so you really have to take time as an organization and leadership team by position to think, what's the career trajectory for these roles? What does succession planning look like for each of these individual roles? If I am starting off at a front desk role, what is my path forward? What opportunities do I have to explore within the organization? And physically map that out. Because I can tell you that people get antsy. This generation gets antsy. If they're not learning something new or doing a new role or skill set, they'll they'll jump ship. Right? But I also understand from the perspective with the owners and operators, you can't have people looking for a promotion every year. So what do you do? Right? Projects, opportunities, stretch assignments, additional responsibility on top of their current workload, having them own a functional area is extremely important. A prime example of that is we had our front desk career progression or succession planning went as traditional front desk role to team lead, to owning and operating events and working in tandem with the studio manager. And then from there, you could have discussions with leadership about stepping into a senior studio role from a managerial perspective or exploring certifications and possibly becoming an instructor if that was in your wheelhouse. But that was our traditional trajectory is you would start entry level front desk, go to a team lead, and then either take on a project that you manage for the business or step into a leadership role in some capacity. And it wasn't every year. It was based off of the milestones that needed to be obtained by that individual to qualify for those opportunities, so they had to do some work. But we had to map that out for them, and we had to have a conversation to say, this is the opportunity that lies within the organization. No limits are placed on any one person. But you have to put in the work and communicate actively with leadership to get you there. And that dialogue is key. Right? So your manager should be having one on ones with their direct reports and skip levels if you're in a more senior role. Right? Transitioning to poor management leadership, I don't wanna beat a dead horse on this, but assess your leaders. Have three sixty reviews. Take your team out to lunch. Ask them how their experience has been. It is not meant to throw shade or dirt on that manager. You wanna make sure that you have the right manager matched with the right team. And it just could be a personality or skill set gap. And there's nothing wrong with moving the chess pieces and adjusting teams so you have the best output, but you have to assess your managers and understand. Are they emotionally intelligent? Are they poor communicators? Is there a gap that needs to be addressed there? Job satisfaction and engagement. You want to make sure that you're very upfront with what the job is going to be in a day in the life, and we'll talk about ways to do that during the onboarding and hiring and interview process later. But talent and employees should know what to expect. They should know what the job is at a very high level so that there's no gap regarding expectation and satisfaction. And lastly, compensation and benefits. Again, Sanctuary was operating on a very tight budget when it came to employee cost and labor cost. We didn't have the big budgets to be able to pay people exorbitant amounts of money to teach class or high hourly rates. But we got creative and thrifty and came up with soft benefits and things that we could do that made our employees' lives easier or gave them value in a way that didn't cost us. And so our employees got free memberships and for their partners, they also got free memberships. We had unlimited PTO. We also had internal development and certification tracks that were free of charge for them. We just really got creative with the compensation model as well with new memberships and incentivize them to be a part of that sales process, whether you were a salesperson, front desk, or an instructor. And so there are things that you can do to get creative to be able to make up for gaps in terms of equity and pay and benchmarking. But you just might have to think outside of the box a little bit. Okay. So some tools. Right? I'm not going to hit on everything because we still have a good amount of slides to get through. But some tools that I really believe in, make sure your goals are documented in the form of KPIs and clear, and the expectations on a monthly and quarterly basis have been defined. Performance reviews have a negative connotation. I will probably change the language of how they're titled internally so that they are well received. But I'm a huge fan of regular evaluations, active coaching, performance reviews, some type of leadership development program that's tailored to the individual where they are versus where they want to be. Right? Assessments, communication assessments, strength assessments, all sorts of different assessments that we'll talk about in a slide towards the end. Those are great tools to understand just how your employees are hardwired and what potential roles would make sense for their background and skill set. And then lastly, you want to make sure that you are sitting down and doing active succession planning because it's so much easier to cultivate the talent that you have within your organization, promote, and backfill versus going to the open market and trying to hire with no reference point. That employee may or may not understand the brand. They may or may not understand, you know, the purpose and be effective at the job. The ramp up time for that is extremely difficult. And so having solid succession planning, understanding how to leverage stretch assignments, projects, rotation to keep people engaged and constantly learning is important. And at the end of the day, if you don't know, outsource. Ask for help. I'm a consultant. There are tons of other resources within the industry that can help you craft this strategy, and there's no shame or no harm in leveraging those resources so you can ensure that you're effective. This is extremely important to me when it comes to business planning. Start small, but please start. You have to start, whether it's a small project centered around engagement or maybe you start to actively do exit interviews and 360s and skip levels to understand engagement. Whatever is gonna have the highest return with the least amount of work and effort and energy in the beginning, that is the project that you start with. But you have to start. Rome was not built in a day. People don't become millionaires overnight. Companies aren't built overnight. And so you have to work in very intentional and strategic sprints. But if you don't start, you will never be able to change the trajectory of what you're seeing in your organization when it comes to employee trends and workforce demographics and how they're managing to that. Four points to think about when you're building your strategy. Define the goal and desired outcome. If you don't know where you're going, you can't build the steps to get there. Right? Be very intentional about the objective. Map out the plan. Make sure that all the stakeholders in the room or that this strategy will impact have an opportunity to weigh in. Assess current state. Take the time to observe, to gather data from multiple data sources, to assess where you are so you can understand bottlenecks, breakdowns, issues, areas of opportunity. Develop an action plan. Once you've defined the goal, once you've gathered the research and the data and information, develop an action plan. Again, Rome was not built in a day. Right? We don't have to execute everything in a month. It can be built in steps with milestones over the course of a long period of time. It can be executed in phases. So you want to make sure that you set up that infrastructure, but also monitor whether or not the strategy and the pace of what you're doing makes sense in terms of decision making and communication. Lastly, implement and monitor. It's great to have goals. It's great to have a strategy based off of data. Once you've implemented it, if you just leave it, there's no way to assess the ROI of what you've built. Right? So it's extremely important to have some sort of foundational project management skills in the sense that you are actively checking to see if what you implemented is resonating with the employee base that it impacts or having the end result that you liked. Talent sourcing. This is a question that is always top of mind, whether I'm a consultant or an owner or an operator. This is something that we're constantly dealing with. And what I can say is getting back to the original slide, the reactive versus proactive approach, it applies here. You want to always be looking for talent even if you have zero vacancies on your team. Because life happens, people move out of state, people get recruited to do something else, people change careers. You want to have a solid bench of talent, not just at your entry level positions, but every role within your organization so you're never caught off guard. I would just, you know, pay attention to who I was meeting at certain competitors when I would take class at different brands to understand their experience. If I'm out at a coffee shop working and I encounter someone that's compelling, I'm keeping their information, maintaining some sort of a connection until there's opportunity for them. One of our student managers at Sanctuary Fitness, I met her when I was out one night playing with friends having a cocktail. And the way that she floor her employees, her level of intentionality and engagement, I was like, I don't have a role for you today, but I might have a role for you in the future. And when we opened up our third location, she was the person that we tapped to monitor that or to manage that rather. And so succession planning and recruiting, that's an ongoing talent sourcing strategy that you should constantly be doing. I put them in order of priority. And so when you're thinking about, okay, where am I gonna backfill these roles? Where am I gonna get the best talent? The best place to do that is from within. It's great for culture. It's great for employee morale. It's easier on you operationally to promote from within and backfill those entry level positions that don't necessarily need the highest level of expertise or that have the flexibility in the space to be able to coach and develop and grow and nurture into being effective in that role. Right? So internal promoting, shifting resources, lateral movements, succession planning, That's extremely important. You want to make sure you always have a bench. The second best option, talent coaching. I take classes, or when I was operating, I took classes at all of our competitors. I made friends with all the instructors, the front desk employees, the sales reps. If ever I'm going to a service business, whether it's hospitality restaurant, I am paying attention to those employees and the tours that I'm getting and the conversations that they're having with me and their follow-up and the questions that they're asking. Because service is service. I can teach the business model to anyone that understands the business of people and connection and speaking authentically and selling value. Right? And so go to your competitors. Go to other industries. Pay attention to the core skill sets. You should have those defined. What you're looking for in specific roles so when you see that talent, it's easy to identify it and poach it. Professional works and networking. And so think of IDEA, BFS, ISSA, Studio Grow, um, health and fitness associations. Those are organizations, most of which have in person opportunities for networking and and mixing and mingling, where you might be exposed to talent that normally would not be on your radar. And then lastly, member your actual member base and job boards. I put job boards last because you don't know what you're gonna get, and you have to be very diligent in sourcing that talent. I've had some really great hires come from LinkedIn, PreciseHire, job boards like Indeed, but it took a lot of vetting and a lot of resumes to get through and a lot of time. But I have had really solid candidates come from those sources. But your member base, I know people tend to shy away from I don't wanna poach my I don't wanna impact the revenue stream or possibly remove a membership that can be helping my number. One to two memberships a year, maybe three, it's not going to impact your bottom line that much. And your members, especially the ones that are brand ambassadors that have been coming and taking 500 classes and post on their social media, they're already bought in. They understand the value of what you're doing. They understand at a very high level how to operate because they've seen it from a client perspective. They already get the brand and the product. And so now you're just teaching them general job specific duties that they probably already have skill set wise or business operations. I'll poach five members a year because those five members, if I place them in the right roles, will yield 10 times what I was making on their membership, and it's a shorter ramp up period. And so really get broad and creative with where you're finding talent and paying attention when talent presents itself in unexpected places. Struggling to make good hires. Are people churning and burning after a couple of months? Are you experiencing what I like to call a little bit of professional cat fishing. You have one person that shows up during the interview, and then sixty days later, it's like, who are you? Where is this person? You're not who I interviewed at all. Right? If that's the case, you probably need to change your hiring and interviewing process specifically. Right? So we're gonna spend some time talking about best practices. My interview process at Sanctuary Fitness was rigorous. I spoke to every single person that we hired over the past four years. I and the hiring manager made the final decision on whether or not that person was a good fit, and it was rigorous by role type. Now you're gonna have to tailor your approach to what you have the capacity for. At the same time, there are also creative ways to shorten process, to automate certain things to make it a little bit more easier from a managerial perspective. But rule number one with interviewing, for every job description, you should have a list of questions by core function that you're asking and a rubric that you're using to score the candidate on how they're performing. That's for you to make a quantitative or, you know, non biased decision on whether or not you're gonna hire this person. Um, but it's also so that if CalOSHA or employment and labor attorneys come calling, you can say, I had a very I had a very systematic, documented, data driven way to evaluate talent and whether or not this person would be a good fit. But you wanna have your list of questions. You wanna have some sort of rubric and scoring system. That's extremely important. The screening process can be done with AI. It can be done with talent management tools. It can be done by someone sitting and physically reviewing resumes to make sure that it's a good match. But that screening upfront process is extremely important. Right? I'm digging into their Instagram. I'm running a background check if we get to that point within the the interview process. Right? I'm asking for references. I am paying attention to their digital presence. I'm having them and this is a tool that I love that I believe Indeed will allow you to do you can outline maybe three or four questions that that individual has to submit a video response to. And I would pick very specific questions based off of the role and scope of responsibility. And if you didn't answer them, automatically disqualifies. Saves me time. And if you didn't answer them, automatically disqualified. Saves me time. If you answered them, I'm looking for body language. I'm looking for how you present. I'm looking for if you make eye contact, the word choice that you use. All of these elements help me shorten my screening process but identify quality talent that much quicker. The structure of your interview. Right? I wanna talk a little bit about the actual interview structures. There's multiple. But structured interviews are gonna be traditional. Unstructured are gonna be more casual and conversation based. Behavioral interviews focus on very specific behaviors, situations, tasks, and results with the purpose to be, I wanna understand how this person responds in this type of environment so I can have an indication of when I'm gonna get on the job. Situational interviews, you may or may not see them historically and wanna see how people handle certain situations, certain environments. Kind of hard to recreate. Um, group interviews, I love because you will have multiple candidates answering questions from one individual person or panel. So then I can see what type of communicator are you. Do you work well in a group? How do you present? How do you play with others? I get a lot of soft benefits or data points that will help me make an informed decision about that candidate through group interviews. Another tool that I live by and every single employee at Sanctuary had to take at least two assessments when hired and one during the interview process are physical assessments. Right? So personality, communication, Myers Briggs, strength assessments, leadership style, and Gallup for your managerial roles. I've listed by category a lot of the assessments that I really swear by and have used in the past. But you want to make sure that you're incorporating this into your hiring and onboarding process because this is data points. These are data points that are going to help you make an informed decision. And the more rigorous you are on the front end, the less work you will have to do once that person is hired. Right? And so take your time. Ask thoughtful questions. Leverage resources like assessments. Leverage different interview styles and types and forms. But have a rigorous process. Don't have it be casual. Make sure that there's an element of a peer interview, the hiring manager, and senior executives signing off and spending time with that person. It sounds excessive, but I have maybe 5% or less of the people that we actually hired ended up not working out. And most of the time, it was because of an availability change or changing their primary schedule or job. You want to have that ideal candidate criteria and interview for that with no exceptions.

Laura Munkholm:
If you wanna do it super simple, you can use the Walla personality test too. Yeah. And then your people can empathize with your clients too if you use it with your clients. So then you can do the personality test, and you can see, oh, I'm a thinker too or I'm a doer too. So there you go.

Desiree Guilliard-Young:
Exactly. Exactly. The last point that we're gonna hit on as a group before we open it up for questions would be the importance of an onboarding process. Most people focus on just the first thirty days. If you're doing that, you are doing yourself and your employees a huge disservice. The onboarding process is really in a hundred and twenty day process. Now a lot of the work that you're doing is upfront during the first two to three months, but you have to have a comprehensive process because, a, that's what your employees are expecting. B, you want to make sure that you're completely checking in, having milestones that both the manager and the employees are actively working towards to ensure that certain deliverables are being met, certain skill sets are being built out, knowledge is being absorbed, etcetera. But it's also a form of employee engagement. And so I've shared this slide with you all as a reference point if you don't necessarily know where to start. But the primary point that I wanna drive home is that you have to have really a long term lens when it comes to onboarding. Those first one hundred and twenty days, that's where the most work is is spent. That's where your energy and effort need to be spent. If you're having a couple of meetings here and there and handing them off to, you know, a lead or maybe they're just jumping right into the role with no foundational training, no check ins, no structure, you're really setting that employee up for failure and yourself. And so before we close for q and a, I wanted to take a second to read a quote that I believe I've stole from LinkedIn, um, but I cite the source, so it's completely fine. When you are a leader, you are no longer responsible for doing the job. You are now responsible for inspiring, for coaching, for mentoring, for motivating your team to produce their very best work. This is leadership today. This is where all of our minds need to be when it comes to talent, attraction, development, retention, and sourcing. It is our job to block and tackle and remove obstacles so that our people can bring their most productive, effective, and authentic selves to work. So with that, I want to thank Walla and Laura for this opportunity to be able to share knowledge with you all today. It's been something that I've been looking forward to, so I'm glad that we were finally able to execute it. And, you know, this is a passion area of mine. Um, this is something that I've dedicated my life's work to. And I also understand that this can be a daunting task if this is not your area of expertise. So as Laura stated, I am building my consulting business. So I wanna meet the need and help businesses be successful. So I love it. If you're interested, my email is listed. Please feel free to reach out.

Laura Munkholm:
Awesome. Thank you so much, Desi. Um, first of all, I'll open it up if anybody has questions live right now. I know lots of people will be watching this on recording, so please, if you do have questions and you're watching this later on, send a note to Desi. Her email is in the presentation there on the last slide. Um, but if anybody has specific questions that's here right now, feel free to pop them in the chat. Um, one question I had for you. So I know you mentioned earlier on in the presentation if you you know, you're a company that doesn't have quick growth potential. Like, if you're a yoga studio and you really don't have a lot of roles, maybe you don't even have a manager at your studio yet. You mentioned some, like, project based work. So do you have examples of things that you've done in the past where you've seen some of your clients do where it's, you know, you've got a rock star front desk person or a person that's a teacher and a front desk staff, and you really want to keep them engaged and you want to give them opportunity, but you're just not at a place to hire a manager yet. What are some ideas for people like that?

Desiree Guilliard-Young:
Great question. And so first, I always sit down with that employee and ask them, what are some areas of interest for you? Right? Because I don't wanna give you a project, and you're like, I don't I don't see any value on this. I could care less. I don't view this as a growing opportunity. Um, but some of the things that we've done operationally would be just streamlining processes and documenting processes. So whether that's inventory management, how we train our new hires for the first two weeks in terms of shift shadowing. So in in the beginning, for onboarding for front desk, I always have them work in tandem with someone until they get to a certain point. It could be refining that process. It could be as large as you have a passion about community outreach and events and engagement. I'm gonna task you with finding at least one sort of community engagement, cultural community service event, event that we can do once a month, once a quarter. It's your responsibility to identify the purpose, define the event, draft up a budget, secure the vendors, and present all that to me. That's a pretty complex project for people that might have managerial aspirations and talents, but you don't have the budget to promote them to that. And I'm looking for things that take work off of my plate. Yeah. Things that I don't necessarily want the studio managers focused on, but that are priority or things that I wanna execute as an owner and operator and don't have the bandwidth for. But events have been successful. Um, client engagement and feedback initiatives have been huge. Figuring out creative ways to capture clients' actual honest feedback. Traditionally, at Sanctuary, we had a little clear box where people would write notes and slide that into it. Sometimes, depending in the beginning years, that notes that weren't favorable would disappear. Um, and so one of our employees raised their hand and said, hey. I would like to refine this process of how we gather and disseminate client feedback. And they came up with a QR code and questions and really streamlined how we were doing things when it came to capturing post class feedback in an offensive way. So those are some examples. But I'm definitely willing to talk people offline to brainstorm about more.

Laura Munkholm:
Yeah. That's perfect. I think you nailed it with asking first, because they may come up with the best ideas that you could have never come up with.

Desiree Guilliard-Young:
You might have an idea. You don't always have to have all of the answers as owners and operators. You know? Ask them what they're seeing. Ask them what projects they wanna work on for the business that they feel could add value, but have them quantify that value and present in a formal way.

Laura Munkholm:
Okay. Awesome. Um, any other questions before we wrap? I know we're a little bit over time, so I wanna be respectful of everyone's schedules. But, um, I'll open it up one last time. Thank you, Cathy. It was great to see you. Alright. Going once, going twice. We've got her for another minute. Okay. Cool. Well, thank you, thank you so much for those of you that joined. Oh Bethany, you have a question? Alright, you type while I'm just chatting a little bit about next month. So we're looking at our programming for next month and it looks like we're going to be working with, um, how to essentially engage your teachers to fill their classes. So different metrics you can use, how you can leverage Walla, um, using our teacher ranking report, so that'll be a really fun one. Okay, Bethany's asking, she's new to ownership and learning how to step into that role. Previous owner ran things quite a bit differently and she's been her really only mentor, um, but ran the business in a more aggressive style. Since I've taken over I've been functioning more in survival mode and just reaching a point that I feel like I can restructure the things that are not working. So amazing situation to be in, Bethany. Right? Like, getting to figure things out for yourself and really redefine it. Any advice there, Desi?

Desiree Guilliard-Young:
Yeah. I give yourself some grace. A. It takes some time. It took me time to adjust my managerial style to the needs of the business, the needs of the employees coming from corporate and then coming into boutique. But the best thing that you can do right now is observe and ask questions and have conversations with as many employees as possible on a variety of topics. What are you seeing that's working? What's not working? What is your experience been like? What do you feel like is missing from the organization? Talk to me about your current role process, how we do things, where there are operational inefficiencies. You know, have conversations. Sit and observe the client experience from start to finish. Take class. You don't have to fix everything today. Now you do wanna ask your team, and as an owner and operator, this is something that you'll have to assess versus going to a senior leader. What are some burning issues that you feel like are really hurting us right now that need to be fixed? And then based off of that list, you'll have to prioritize accordingly. But the best thing that you can do right now is observe, have conversations, get to know your people, ask questions, really learn the nuances of the business, learn what did and didn't work with that former owner and operator. And then lastly, find yourself a good mentor. Anyone that tells you they don't have a mentor, don't need help at their stage of their career is lying. I still have a mentor, an executive coach, and I've had one my entire career, um, different people for different seasons. You need somebody that you can bounce ideas off of, especially if you're new to this role. Right? You need that soundboard and that mirror. So find yourself a good peer mentor or a mentor or an executive coach. But I think those those few things will definitely set you up for success.

Laura Munkholm:
Amazing. That's great, great advice. Um, all right. Well thank you so much, Bethany. Good luck with that. Yeah, you're gonna nail it, girl. Just being here and listening and absorbing is such a step in the right direction. I can tell you a lot of owners that I know that have never sat through or even thought about a lot of this. So you are already ahead of the curve. Yeah. Alright. Well, have a great rest of your Thursday, everyone. For those of you watching this on record, please touch base if you have any questions. And in the meantime, reach out to Desi. She is a rock star. She has so much insight, and she can really dive into your specific business and help you identify those areas where you can really make improvements. So thanks, Desi. Have a great day, everyone.

Desiree Guilliard-Young:
Bye, everyone.

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