Implement the Potato Protocol for Effective Gym Communication

We have spent thousands of hours now with affiliate owners, as well as other business owners and high performers. Do you know what the most consistent nuisance across the board is? Boundaries. It just happens to be particularly bad inside an affiliate, and it makes complete sense.

Boundaries

“They don’t leave me alone,” she replied, defeat in her tone, completely exasperated. “I love my clients, I do, they are great, they just are so unaware. They never stop talking. The worst part of all, it's always at the worst time. I have like 30 minutes total to myself a day, and like clockwork in come the text messages.”

While that may not be verbatim, if you own a business, you are likely nodding your head in agreement and frustration. Boundaries in any area of life is hard, in business its way harder. Saddled by guilt and expectation, you find yourself in a reluctant, albeit recalcitrant, relationship with your clients, at their beck and call. That call always comes at the strangest times too.

What does this all have to do with a Potato? Truly nothing. We named it that because it was easier to remember, and if we are going to fix this problem you are going to need to be perpetually aware, if you are going to change the behavior. Potatoes.

The Potato Protocol  

The potato protocol is actually the professionalization protocol, and it's such a necessity it made its way to this periodical. (How about that alliteration) I have never met a business who was not trying to improve their professionalization, and as such their service. At any given turn, any business in any industry is trying to improve their forward-facing product or service. Weirdly enough the last place most think to improve is in their communication. Which brings us together to the potato protocol, its a communication protocol.

Specifically, it is the question of: how do your clients communicate with you?

To which most answer, every means necessary, most of them would send smoke signals too. The average nuisance of a client sends an email, a follow up text to let you know they emailed you, and then a DM to tell you to check your texts because they texted you. All of this probably happened at 2am because they couldn't sleep, so they thought they should fire off an email about the workout tomorrow.

While this is an extreme example, if you have been in business a while I bet its happened, if not, spoiler alert: its coming. It's not a malicious thing, its frankly a convenience thing to them, and that's where the whole problem starts. Because it's convenient to them, but a nuisance to you, now we have tensioned the relationship, and it all can be avoided.

The less access we have to anything, the more we value it. This is a pretty basic value law. Sure, there are some exceptions like your child, or pet, but even those you miss more when they are away. Its human nature. However, out of service and servitude, maybe even fiefdom, you feel obligated to serve whenever called upon. While this may seem altruistic, like most things the irony of actuality reigns supreme. Communication in general is an overreaching irony, as its the epitome of less is more.

Humans worldwide struggle with boundaries, no surprise as everything has unrestricted access to us. Phones, social media, email, the list goes on, and with that growing list is our decreasing prevalence of privacy. But you love your clients, and you want to make them happy, so you add them to the ever-growing list of things that vy for your attention.

However, in your servitude, you have made an unknown error. By making yourself endlessly available, you are not available at all, not in the respected or opportune sense. Unlimited means unlimited, as in without limits, and that's what your clients generally have to you. Anything limited, however, is the opposite and endlessly more valuable. You have unknowingly devalued yourself, your time, and even your expertise. Problematic as the second most common problem in business is not being able to charge enough.

Affiliates

The average affiliate has a 13% attrition rate, and that's a conservative figure, I would guess its far higher, but the data is self-reported. This is a problem, as through all my consults over the years, few actually have an accurate figure of a number of canceling members and instead have a precipitously high number of people labeled holds. To be clear, if your hold policy does not have a stated end date, or reinstatement date, those holds are cancels. They were just being nice, and didn't want to say cancel.

This should not be the case, even in the worst affiliates, the model works. CF even when done poorly is still effective, so people should not be quitting because of that service model. So the next likely suspect then is not the program, but the service of the program. Which goes far beyond 321go. Its how you do anything. Most cancels are a byproduct of frustration, that they deemed handled poorly for whatever reason. In our experience, most of these self-reported poor responses from the clients were in frustration with how the owner or coach handled it. Generally stating something to the effect of; they took forever to get back to me, or they were rude when they responded, or they seem bothered that I was just trying to give them feedback. The list goes on, and all of those could be resolved with one protocol, ye-old-tater, the potato protocol.

I have seen it one thousand times. Every client I have had ever, has at some point read a message while on their coaching call, to which I watch their face go white, upon asking if everything is ok, they release the litany of frustration over the text they just got. Generally exasperated, thinking clearly is not what is happening upon opening that message. The most common reason for this frustration from the owner is the lack of respect the client showed by texting out of the blue, or at such a time, and of course the tone of the message.

Fascinating this tone of message consideration is. Humans have an intriguing way of reading text in their own perception. They generally assign a certain tone to certain people based on their perception of them and experience. Worse, the receiver's disposition in that moment can dictate immensely how text is received. In happier moments, they view messages less hostile, in melancholy moments, they view messages more volatile. How we perceive text is absent of context, emotion, or tone and its a huge problem.

We are verbal and physical creatures. We are designed to interpret tone and tonality, body language, and presence in every communication. In today's text age, digital communication has stripped this from us, and we are not truly evolved to handle it. Further its so readily available and absent of conflict we can send it off whenever we wish. Without clear expectations communicated about when and where messages can be received, they come at all hours, with no consideration for what else you may be doing. Which embroils the owner every time, but that's not the sender's fault, it's the owners for not setting the boundary, and then out of frustration reading the text in their own perceived situational context: read: angry.

You get it, the problem is pervasive. Communication is best served in small and restricted doses. Let's consider how to do this.

The potato protocol is a dictated and published standard of communication. It dictates where and when communication can and will be received. It dictates a clear expectation of time in which a response can be expected. It sets standards.

At first glance, this seems rude to most people. They would feel bad imposing such a restriction on their clients. When people are upset, you would assume you want to address them immediately. This is logical, but it's actually flawed. You would assume that by giving them more access, you are providing a better service, so restricting them seems counterproductive.

There are a host of humans who are far more aware than the normal culprits who blow your inbox up. These people would like to communicate with you, but they do not know how. Yes, you are wide open, but because of this, you are not clearly open. Which means, out of respect they say nothing. This could be considered a good thing, but many people will just choose to not air their grievances, and instead they will quit. The solution could have been as simple as clear standards to air such grievances.

The one’s who love to blow you up, often do so with little to no regard to its significance, and instead fire them off with just a tickle of frustration, after all, you are wide open. Even when the problem wasn't a big deal, a “hey, just want you to know” text gets sent off, and what they don't know is that it ignites you each time. They just think they are being “nice”.  By creating a standard of which any message can be received, 90% of issues will be forgotten or deemed unworthy for them to send. Solving for a whole lot right away. 

Setting Your Protocol

Here are some questions to consider when setting your protocol:

1. What are your hours of operation? Where are they stated?
2. Who responds to what context? Owners, GM’s, Coaches, Managers, etc. should all have different lines of communication. 
3. Who has access to you? This list should be your GM, or Head Coach max. Clients should not have your cell phone number.
4. What is your escalation protocol? When something is wrong, how wrong does it have to be to get to me?
5. Do you have office hours? 
6. What are your channels? 

The hours of operation are a funny and overlooked one. Gyms just seem to lack them, especially in terms of communication. Set your hours and stick to them. If your hours are 9-5, communication is received and distributed during those hours only. Think clearly when you would like to be disturbed. I doubt it's during dinner or sleep.

Who responds is a game changer. If you have people in place, they should field their respective complaints. If you don't have people in place, get them there. This is not you saddling them with drama, it is letting people go to the source, and what it does is cut down drama. Many people will not say it to the face so to speak but would rather gossip. Coaching communication should go to coaches, management to management.

Access to you, follows on the last. Who should have access to you? Do you have access to Jeff Bezos when you place an order, can you text him when it doesn't arrive, could he even help? Do you have the chef's number at the restaurant in town, do you text him to tell him you are coming? I hope you said no, if not you may be the problem lol. The point is, removing access to you, allows you to be more focused when you receive what does make it to you. Removing the stimulus, changes the response. Only your GM and Head coaches should have line of communication with you. Everything else should be clearly defined where and who it should be communicated to. If something gets to you out of protocol, you can simply respond with the protocol “thank you, please direct this to X as per the published protocol, they will better be able to address this quickly”

Now that nothing gets to you, decide what gets to you and how? Empowering your team to solve problems is a huge investment in them. Just set the standards, what types of things need to get to you. We like to do this with our clients at a price point consideration. Any issue over 200$ comes to me for example. 

Office hours will be your game-changer. Establish a day, make it one day, make it a few hours of that day. Call it Thursdays from 3-6. Make this available on your calendar, with a scheduling link. Have the same done for all key staff members at their time of choosing. When a problem makes it to you, you can better serve the client in person, than text. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, here is my link to my calendar, Id like to discuss this in person if it's a problem for you” This will eradicate 99.9% of all problems as its not big enough to discuss in person, and this will help the client self-reflect on the issue, rather than your response or lack of, even if it didn't need a response at all.

Lastly, communicate your channels and time frames. Email hours are x-x and responses will be received within x hours. For x type of things please send to x channels. Slack, email, voxxer, etc. Avoid platforms that do not have off switches. Like DMs, and Cell phones. The very nature of these platforms is they are always on, always open, so when a client DM’s you and they see “online” they are increasingly pissed with every minute a response is not received. Even if its after hours. Clients should not have cell numbers, especially yours, and DMs are personal. Naturally I know you all have given out your cell prior, you will just need to be diligent in your protocol moving forward.

How you respond to anything is predicated by how you receive it. Controlling the manner in which information is received is the easiest way to control and improve how you respond. This benefits both you and the client.

Improving and clarifying when and how you will respond and where improves the client relationship. This not only tells them when to communicate but it also ensures or suggests that communication with them will be focused and present. This is a big improvement over the fractured attention commonly given.

The less people have access to you the more they value the access they do have. As you move into the professional era of your business, this is important. You can still shake hands and kiss babies, but the rarer you are, the more important you become. Clients having clear boundaries is the same as family having boundaries. Barriers are not meant to keep people out; they are meant to protect the relationships within them. There is irony in this, but when it is realized it will change your life.

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