Will:  

So if you as an instructor should have learned anything from 2020, it's that one of your primary responsibilities as an instructor is to create that community. So it's to have that social media account where you can stand for what you stand for, and you can create a meeting place for your users to go. Being an instructor is not just about delivering a fitness experience. It's also about creating the community that allows people to engage with that.

Will:  

Hey, I'm Will Brereton, founder of SH1FT Fitness. And this is Group Fitness Real Talk, a show about how to survive and even thrive as an instructor in 2020 and beyond.

Will:  

Hi, guys, this is a quick note from well before you jump into the podcast. So when I listened to this Q&A back, I realized that one of the things I should have done right at the top was refer everybody back to Episode 2 of the podcast. So in that podcast, we talked about 8 things that every instructor must do and 2020. And we also created a free resource that you can download at the podcast link. So this is something that we created a few months ago, but with winter coming, and many places going back into lockdown, I think it's a bit of time than ever to either revisit this or see it for the first time. So we're gonna put a link in the show notes. Now on to the Q&A.

Will:  

And welcome to the podcast. So the last few weeks, we've been focusing on bringing you some great interviews with people from in and out of fitness, giving you insights into how they're dealing with the challenges that this year is throwing at them, building community facing adversity, how to have a positive mindset and all that good stuff. We're going to take a slight change of tech this week, and we're going to focus on some questions and my answers that we've had from our podcast listeners. Now it goes without saying that if you ever have a question that you want answered on the podcast, you should feel free to reach out to me on social media or to send us an email details are always in the show notes. Okay, so our first question is one that relates to a big announcement that happened about a month ago. And this one comes from john. So the question is, what is the impact of Apple Fitness Plus on the fitness industry. So the first thing to note is that this is going to send shockwaves through the industry the announcement did and when the actual launch launch happens, everybody will have their eyes transfixed on what Apple is doing. But the other thing to note is that I've seen quite a lot of commentary, which suggests that Apple is somewhat jumping on the bandwagon. Obviously, people have been locked down companies like peloton have had amazing growth. But Apple has planned this for a long time, they've been working on fitness as an adjunct to the Apple Watch for years. And I think that Apple from speaking to people with Indian within the industry and understanding what their goals are, has a bigger play around health, not just around fitness. So fitness is like a column of their overall strategy, not the sum total of it. The first things to know about Apple fitness plus just from looking at the output that they've put into the sort of ecosphere so far is that they have taken a really diverse approach to fitness. So they've got some older trainers, they've got some differently abled trainers. And they've obviously got trainers from all over the world, all different colors, all different creeds. And that is really great to see they're following through on the real focus of diversity within the fitness industry. So the first thing to note is that just looking at it, it looks like a product that is really going to be diverse, and come through on a lot of the sort of future facing ideas that Apple is often renowned for. For those that are worried about the impact this is going to have on their burgeoning digital provision the burgeoning digital businesses that they've got going of their own, I would say that you probably don't need to freak out too much right now. So if I was a big fitness aggregator, or if I was a peloton, or Liz Mills on demand or a fit from the UK, I would be really, really worried about what Apple fitness is doing. The reasons for that is that Apple's obviously going to do a fantastic job, the content is going to look amazing, the content is going to be delivered seamlessly, it's going to integrate with everybody's Apple devices, meaning that they can use Apple Music, meaning that like they will be able to get original music pump straight through into the workout. And obviously, there's the integration with the Apple Watch pleasure rings, I'm not sure how I feel about that particular statement. But that will enable people to gamify their experience. And it's also just seamlessly sinking in with the average Apple users life. But there's a few things to note about that. First is that Apple has said that it will only be given to users of the Apple Watch in the first instance. So we've already got a much smaller group of pre qualified individuals that are even going to be consuming Apple fitness plus, so it won't just be Apple users, it has to be Apple users with an Apple Watch. So that's a relatively small subsection of the overall population. So if you're someone worrying about what's the impact going to have, you have to think how many of my current users have an Apple Watch. If the answer is not many of them, then they're not even going to be within the, within the original audience of Apple fitness plus. The second thing is, and this is where I think the larger fitness digital fitness providers and aggregators have a bigger problem that they faced with Apple fitness than smaller ones is that if you are an individual instructor, or if you're a small studio that's just moved into digital provisions since locked down and since COVID, what you're focusing on and we're going to talk a little bit more about this and some of the later questions that I'm going to be covering today. But the differentiated that you have is your ability to ability to create a community. And this is something that through its scale, and through sheer volume, Apple is just not going to be able to do, the more users you have, and they're going to have hundreds of thousands of users, the harder it is to create a personalized bespoke White Glove experience. And within lockdown, when people are feeling disconnected, when people are feeling like they really really need someone to take their needs into account, they're not going to get that from a commodified product like Apple fitness. Plus, what they are going to get is a sleek presentation, great content, great audio, great video, simplicity, ease and cost effectiveness, because the overall cost of 999 per month isn't going to be too big for most Apple Watch owners to buy taken. And then you've also got the fact that they've got the apple one subscriptions, you know, rolling music and fitness and news into a single subscription. So Apple is really coming for that whole market. So if you're someone that's already providing a digital Fitness Solution, either an instructor or a small studio or a small gym, what you just need to double down on is the thing that epiphan is won't be able to do. And it's the thing that we've talked about in this podcast a lot. And that is community. It's understanding who your customer is, it's thinking about what are their needs, what are they struggling with right now. And it's aiming to do all the things around the outside of the actual fitness content that is going to fulfill those needs and keep that customer coming back to you. I've used this analogy before, but it's a little bit like the boutique studio versus the budget gym or the low cost gym. At the low cost gym, you have a code. And that's how you're known. And often they have those pod entry doors where you type in your security code you go in, there's no towel service, there's no reception you do you work out, you pay a very low amount. Usually it's very clean, there's a great selection of weights, and you can go at anytime you like, but you're just a number. You compare that to a boutique studio where you go in and they know your name. And they know the last class you went to they know the next class you're going to they know who your favorite instructor is, you get that white fluffy towel is the nice mailman goods or like whatever moisturizer you particularly like in the changing rooms. The instructor knows your name, the instructor knows your limitations. The instructor knows whether you've had injuries in the past, the things you like how you like to be challenged, how you like to be called in class. So on the one hand with things like Apple fitness plus, people are going to remain a number simply because it's a volume game. And that's what people are going for. And so if you're worrying about how you're going to compete with that, I would say don't worry, because you're not competing in the same leagues. Your goal should be to create a community of people that come because they know that you're going to know their name, that you can provide something different to a big company that can charge $10 a month because the reality is that if you're a small studio, if you're an instructor $10 a month is a very, very low amount. And you would need to have a lot of customers to justify your time for that amount. So Apple's always going to be you on the cost. And they're probably always going to beat you on the diversity and variety of content that you can provide. What they can't beat you on is knowing your customer and providing your customer with a unique service that they can't get somewhere else.

Will:  

Right. So that brings us to question number two. Question number two for today is a question from Peggy Turner. And she's asking how long should a virtual class be? Now this is a great question. But unfortunately, I don't have enough information to answer is specifically but I'm going to go through all of the things that I would think about when thinking about classlink. The first thing that I think you need to consider and this is something that every instructor or studio should be considering is am I doing virtual as on demand? Or am I doing it as a live stream because I think that that plays into the length of time that your session needs to be. So just to clarify, the two things we're talking about is video on demand where you pre record your content and live stream either playing it out on a one way system one way interface like Facebook or Instagram or where you're using a platform like zoom to have a two way live stream so that you can also see the people on the other side. The first thing to note is that in my opinion on demand content should probably be on the shorter end versus live stream content. The reason being that people's desire to consume on demand content means that they want to be able to do it at a time that fits in with their day. If they're already deciding that they want to consume this content at a time that fits in, then they probably will prefer slightly shorter content. So my personal opinion, and I know that what I like when I consume on demand content is the 30 minutes sweet spot. I think 30 minutes for an on demand piece of content is a great length. The reason is this, if someone's consuming it on demand, and they're choosing when they want to watch it, they are probably also considering whether they want to stack it with some other workouts. And this is where the question comes not just down to how long should my individual sessions be, but what should be the overall provision of content that I provide my digital solution as an instructor, my personal view is that your on demand content should be up to 30 minutes for a full workout. But you should also complement that with shorter workouts around the edges, it may be a 10 or 15 minute finish, it may be a 10 or 15 minute mobility or flexibility session, things that people can bolt on. And the reason for this is clear. We know very well from the user behavior of people that have been consuming on demand furnace for a long time, that people are quite happy to stack workouts. So if they want to do a 45 or 60 minute workout, they will happily do two workouts back to back, they don't need that to be a single piece of content, the fact that you haven't given them a 60 minute workout isn't a blocker to them getting a 60 minute workout. But if all of your on demand content is long, then they have to scrub which means you know, put their finger on the cursor and then scroll through to cut down or they have to finish early, or they have to skip through to halfway in order to get a workout that fits with their time zone. So Peggy, you're asking how long should a virtual class be, if you're meeting an on demand class, my suggestion is go for the 30 minute sweet spot, make sure you've got some additional content around the side. So you can bolt them on here. And then. Now if you're doing a live stream, then the situation is a little bit different. And the reason for this is because a live stream is an appointment opportunity. So I think of it a little bit like people have already given up their time in order to do a live stream live. So you've captured their attention, and you can probably give them a slightly longer session. So if you're doing a live stream, then my suggestion would be sticking around the 45 minute zone. Now I have a personal aversion to any class that's longer than 60 minutes. And in my experience, obviously, I've been a Beachbody. I've worked at Les Mills, I've worked in many gyms, I've also spent time at classpass. And seen some aggregate data via yoga classes that run longer than 60 minutes are popular. But other than that the sweet spot for a class is 45 minutes. Now that sweet spot, which was with classpass. And related to everything that wasn't yoga, that relates to live classes, and I don't know that there's been a whole lot of data pulled on what live streams live, because obviously live streams have only been around for a few months. But here's my suggestion, because the other thing I would note is that if you are creating any type of digital content as an instructor, you should be thinking about how you can repurpose that content in order to get the most use out of it. So if you're doing a 45 minute live stream, then the opportunity is for you to then cut that down into a shorter on demand. So if you do a live stream that involves say, 30 minutes of work out, and then you have maybe a little bit of warm up at the start and a finish, or a mobility or flexibility section at the end, you can clip that off using anything like iMovie and make a shorter clip, you can even make two clips. So say you did a warm up and a hit class or an interval training class, whatever you want it to be, could be a dance class. And then the last 10 minutes are stretch before moving on. You can clip that into two pieces of on demand content. So the big question is not how long should a virtual class be? But how am I going to use it? I think I probably posed more questions than I've answered in this. But I think it's really important because you should always be thinking about how you can cross purpose your content, how you can divvy it up in different ways that allows you to have a wider library and appeal to more people. The last thing I would say is ask your users. The biggest mistake that I see people making. And this applies sort of across the board and fitness is they make decisions based on what they think their users want. And they never just ask them. So one of the first things I ask when I work with a studio or a fitness business is when was the last time you surveyed your users. Now, the way you survey users is really important. You need to ask questions in a specific way. And that's probably a topic for another podcast. It's not something that I'm going to get into now. But it's really important you understand what are the actual needs of your customer? I would say that you should be focused on variety, but also focused on understanding what is the outcome that I want from this? Am I creating a piece of content that someone can consume at any time? Or is this like appointment viewing? Is this something that someone has to turn up to? Because they're different considerations and that they will have an impact on how long the class will be.

Will:  

Okay, next up is a question from Kristin Sokol. And this one is an interesting one simply because it's a question that relates to an age old concern that has been impacting fitness instructors for an incredibly long time. But it's not related to digital and it's not related to virtual. So it provides quite a nice opportunity to talk a little bit about the way things used to be and then maybe wind it back into how they are now. So Kristen's question is, how do you deal with horrible management, old toxic gym culture. Now, I think anyone who has taught in a variety of gyms, like I have, unlike many of our listeners have, will have had some situation where they have clashed with the group fitness manager, or the gym owner or management. So at the end of the day, teaching classes and being involved in fitness is often an industry where there are pretty big egos, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Like if you listen to the podcast with viven, you would have heard about how he talked about people being Pied Pipers, and there's a certain element or having to really put yourself out on display, and giving your all when you're on the stage. But what that can also mean is that people can either really like your personality, or they can not like it. And one of the most important for learning curves. And I think you need to be honest, and instructor is understanding that some people will love you and some people won't like you. And that doesn't mean that you are good or bad. It simply means that you have a style. And that style works with some people and not with others. But what that means is that every single fitness instructor at some point along the line has had a situation where they have felt that the management of their gym either doesn't know what they're doing, or has it in for them, or is horrible or toxic. And sometimes it's true. And sometimes it's not. And sometimes it's somewhere in the middle. The thing I would say about that is that most of us as group fitness instructors are working as third party contractors. So most people within the fitness industry at least working in group fitness, and not employees. Now I know that some people are and so if you're a group fitness instructor and you're employed, I'm not suggesting that you're not part of the industry, obviously, you you guys met it too. But for most of us, especially once you teach in multiple gyms, we are contractors, and therefore we don't have the same sort of protections that employees have. And the other thing is we have this set, we don't have the same restrictions on what we can do we have more freedom. So I've often been asked this, how do you deal when How do you deal with management that's really terrible, or people that aren't giving you an opportunity or people that have it in view? And my answer would be you just need to take control of your own situation. So you know, back in the day, when I say back in the day, might even just be meaning a year ago, it could be the case that you were teaching, you know, one gem or two gems. But I'm pretty sure that most people are in that situation. Unless you're in New Zealand, or Australia, where they've managed to you know, keep Coronavirus at bay. So probably the situation is somewhat similar there, you've probably had the gym close, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, you may have got your classes back you may not have. But what this is probably suggested to you. And I hope that you have understood where it's coming from is that you need to take control of your own career and of your career is blocked or controlled by someone above you, then you are not in control of it and you have two choices. The first choice is that you decide that you want to be more than everything more than anything and you suck it up. And you deal with that level of conflict and you change your behavior. And you say the other choices is that you're not happy with it and you walk away. But at the end of the day, this has to be your choice. I have seen and I'm just going to do a tough love here. Kristen, not to you in particular, but I'm just gonna say my experience from having worked in the fitness industry for a long time I have seen so many instructors get bitter about the situation that they find themselves in at their gym, and no one is forcing them to be there. You have to find your own joy. And so if you are dealing with a management structure that you really don't like, and you are a freelance construct that my advices get out and do your own thing. Now is the time you have all the tools at your disposal to do it. Go back to some of the previous podcasts, think about how you can go virtual and just understand that your worth comes from what you can provide to your users, not from what some person in management thinks of you. And that is a lesson that I think a lot of instructors over the years could have learned and I hope they're learning more now that they're taking control of their own careers.

Will:  

Okay, next up is a question for Paul. And this one's a fairly open ended one. I'm guessing that Paul might be from the UK and that is we're going back into lockdown. What do we do so when this podcast goes out, the UK will be in about day four of lockdown version 2. The US his presidential election will have been passed by a week. And the likelihood is, is that there's still no idea about what will happen on a state by state basis in terms of whether gyms and facilities will be open or closed. And that will still be a question that we deal with as we go into winter. In the rest of Europe, lockdowns are happening if you're in Australia and New Zealand then went fine. So if you're in Australia or New Zealand, you can you know, just zone out for the next few minutes. Okay, so we're going back into lockdown as a fitness instructor. What do I do? I think that this harks back to one of the first things that we dealt with in this podcast. And that is you have to think about what you are doing as an instructor, the types of things you would teach into your classes, and you have to consider things like the format or the programs that you're teaching. And you have to think about, do you work for your format? Or does your format work for you. And if you are not able to make a living, teaching the class that you were teaching in lockdown, because of whatever restrictions are put upon you, then you really need think about whether that is the right thing for you to be teaching. We're not going to talk about any specific formats here. You just need to do a little bit of an audit and think, okay, so we went into lockdown version one, we came out of it. We're now going into lockdown version two, can I continue to survive? Can I continue to run my business? Can I continue to fulfill the needs of my customers based on the things that I'm teaching? And if the answer was no, and you just rolled your way through lockdown one, and now you find yourself on lockdown, too, then you really, really need to have a long hard think about whether that is the right thing for your career long term. I really hope that a vaccine is coming. It will certainly make everybody's life easier. But I think that if you were if you were a business owner, so for instructors, if you are a business owner, which you are, you need to be thinking about what is the How am I going to deal with this if it lasts for a longer period of time. And the only way you're going to deal with this is being able to roll with the punches, focus on what you're allowed to do in your location. But it's probably going to result in you needing to have some provision of online and in person. And if you cannot teach your formats online, or if you don't have the freedom to provide them in person, wherever you like, then you are limited as to how you can run your business. And you really need to have a think about whether or not that justifies your time and money and the investments that you put into it in the long term. So that kind of covers off, like we're going into lockdown. What do we do in terms of what am I teaching? The other question is, how do I approach the mental headspace of going back into lockdown as an instructor. Now, I know that it's really, really tough. And I know that people really enjoy getting back to teaching their live classes in even people that really, you know, jumped on the digital bandwagon and had a really good time teaching digital classes and found that they loved the fact that they have more freedom to teach them and they wanted that they could reach people from other places that they could do it from the garage and don't have to worry about going into the gym, I know that even those people that are really on board with digital still really enjoyed getting back to teaching in person. And that's because almost all of us listening to this unless you're really, really new. And you've only come into the fitness industry in the last year. And if you have I like, reach out to me, I'd love to hear your experience, you probably got into this, because you enjoy the interpersonal relationship, the real life experience of teaching a class. And the reality is that this year has taken so much of us and it has taken that again. So what I would say is like allow yourself to grieve a little bit for the fact that we're going back into lockdown. It's it's shitty, it sucks. But also just acknowledge that even if digital isn't the best option for you, it still is an option that allows you to continue doing what you do to continue your business and to continue impacting the lives of people. And I think I would advise that you take a step back and do what I try to do when I am my bitter self. And I'm not going to say that I'm this self all the time. But when I'm being the person that I want to be I think about who am I trying to impact. And for me, at this point in my life, the people I'm trying to impact our instructors like I'm trying to give instructors the tools to teach better classes to be more successful, to build a business to have more financial freedom to have more time. And if you're an instructor, then you'll probably trying to improve the life of your users in your community. And you do that in a variety of ways you do it by providing them with an opportunity to talk to people an opportunity to work out an opportunity to keep themselves fit. But I would I would think how do I sort of change my mindset to be my best self and to think about what is the outcome I'm trying to achieve? Because if you can focus on that it's really easy to remember that we work in an industry that allows us to really positively impact the lives of other people. And that's not something that everybody can say and I know that like, that sucks right now. And so I'm not going to minimize that in any way. But just focus on the positives, get back into digital. Hopefully, you managed to get yourself online at the start of lockdown. If you didn't do it, now's your opportunity. It is never too late roll back to some of the early podcast episodes where we give you the beginner's guide of how to get up and running as a digital instructor. Okay, time for our final question of the day. And this is a question that was coming in left, right and center from so many people. So to summarize, the question is, how do you go about creating community online? How do you build class size? How do you encourage stickability? How do you hold people accountable? And this is something that I know a lot of instructors are really struggling with, particularly in the concept of digital transition. So you're teaching online classes, you're teaching on demand classes, you're teaching virtual classes. And you're really struggling with understanding how you can get that community and connection to occur. When people are diversely spread out and their living rooms. They're not working out together, they may not have met each other before and it's just different to the in real life experience. Now that I this is a really hard one, the discussion with Dave and I think throughout some really great ideas about how to go about creating culture and creating community. But the difficulty that most people are facing those of us that are in countries that are going back into lockdown are the suffering from quite heavy restrictions on what you can and can't do with live classes is how do you go about creating community when people are entirely virtual. And I think we really do have to like look outside the box yet. I know that a lot of workplaces did things I you know, the zoom pub quiz or the zoom drink nights, I don't know about you. But as lockdown rolls around for the second time, the number of means that I'm seeing on the internet, suggesting that nobody wants to do the zoom calls anymore, suggests that maybe that has something whose time has passed. And I think the reason for that is that it's trying to make community happen in an environment where it's difficult. And community is ultimately something that you can help along. And that you can curate, and that you can push in the right direction. But community is something that has to happen organically. So if you think about something like a zoom quiz, you're essentially forcing people to log on and have fun. And while that might have been fun, but it was novel, now that everyone has so much internet fatigue and zoom fatigue, it's just not fun anymore. So when I think about what are the best ways to create community, I have to think about what are the things that people are dealing with in this part of the in this part of their lives. And I think that one of the things that we struggle with with community is expecting that people will put the effort into building the community. So you know that if you build it, they will come if I run this zoom event at 7pm, on a Friday night people will come. And the reality is that there's a whole myriad of reasons why people might not come to that that may or may not have anything to do with the actual concept of what you wanted to run. I think that if I think about how was community created extremely well, in a context that makes sense with the situation we find ourselves in with digital provision, I look to the Beachbody Coach network. Obviously, this is something that many of our listeners might be super familiar with probably more familiar with me, more familiar than me. But this is something that I saw that I think that can be really taken upon by instructors to help with building that community. So when you think about what Beachbody used to do, or sorry, what Beachbody still do, they run challenge groups. And so the beachbody coach will basically put and they have their own Beachbody groups, special website now within the Beachbody ecosystem of websites, but they used to do all of this through Facebook. And this is something that you can replicate 100% through Facebook. But essentially, Beachbody would run challenges. So the challenge could be, it could be one of their past programs. But let's use the example of is the new program that comes out and everybody's going to start doing it on the same day. But the thing is, this is video on demand. So one of the key things about Beachbody was that you know, press playing go but you can do it at whatever time suits you recommend that you do it in the morning. But you know, if you need to get your workout in the afternoon, that's fine. So they were already working in a situation where everybody within the group or within the community was consuming the fitness content at a different time. So if you're someone that's struggling to create community in the live stream, and people are working out, really, we're winding it back, and we're talking about creating community in a situation where people are not working out at the same time. So there's no contemporaneous workout here. They're choosing to do it in their own living room in their own garage in their own time, and they're not doing it with anybody else. So we've already got a leg up on them with some of the facilities that we've got now in terms of live streaming. When you think about video on demand, there is no interactivity there. So how do you create that community. And that was about encouraging accountability online and getting. So what the Beachbody coaches did so well, is that they got people to post a sweaty selfie or confirm within the group that they've done the day's work out. And what that did is it meant that people could do their work out in their own time, they could post the group in their own time, people could consume that in their own time. And if people can do things in their own time, and the content is good, then they will just suddenly start to do more. And I think one of the big problems that instructors have when they worry about creating community in a digital environment is they expect to go from zero to 105 minutes, you just can't build Rome in a day, you can't create the kind of community that you had in person overnight online, it's just not going to happen. But you can put together the building blocks of how you create that community. And one of the things that I will focus on is try and do it organically. So instead of trying to make fetch happen, and trying to create events around the woods, your community will be built, I would say just facilitate the creation of those own community bonds. And one of the best ways you can do that is by using a Facebook group, encouraging people to post the results of their workout, even on Instagram, tagging other people tagging you sharing that with the group, but not requiring people to turn up at a certain time. Now, that's not to say that doing a zoom q&a, where it's not about fitness, it's just about community like a zoom one night or a q&a once a week is not a great idea. One of the sort of instructors who I think has done the best jobs of going virtual quantum Mini, he's in London, he does on demand workouts, he films them so that they're basically fresh content every day. He doesn't do them live, he pre recorded them, then he sets them live, but everyone gets a new workout every day. And then he occasionally does a live workout. And then on Monday nights, he also does a q&a where people can turn up, they can ask them questions about the workouts or about not the workouts or about anything. And what that does is it creates the opportunity for people to ask questions to build community to build rapport with each other, but it's not shoved down their throat. And I think that it's really important that whatever you do to create community, you do it organically. And the easiest way to do something organically is to not make it a massive imposition in somebody's life. But don't expect it to happen overnight, it may take a number of weeks or months of you persevering with positivity within a Facebook group, to get people to follow along with what you're doing and to also participate. Don't be disheartened, just keep on going because what you're doing has value. I would love to be able to give a really simple solution for how do you go about creating community easily and easily holding people accountable in an online situation. The reality is that in order to do both of these things, you have to create relationships and relationships are created when people share experiences, ideas back and forth with you as the instructor him them and with them and the other people within the community or the class. And that's not something that they can send that can simply happen overnight. It's something that takes time and that you have to work on and develop. And so if you as an instructor should have learned anything from 2020, it's that one of your primary responsibilities as an instructor is to create that community. So it's to have that social media account where you can stand for what you stand for. And you can create a meeting place for your users to go. Being an instructor is not just about delivering a fitness experience. It's also about creating the community that allows people to engage with that. And that's not something that you can simply do by teaching a really good class. So I really encourage you to go back and listen to the episode with Bevin James as a second time I've listened to it about three times now. And just think about what he says about being a Pied Piper and the opportunity you have to be a leader within your community, in particular your local community. And think about as a leader, what am I what are the attributes, what are the characteristics that I want to be role modeling so that other people follow this and then you need to do that you need to turn up and you need to be accountable, you need to give more than you're expecting them to give and then they will start to give it to

Will:  

Okay, and that brings us to the end of this special Q&A session of Group Fitness Real Talk. So this is going to be listened to at a time when locked downs are starting again. And when in the Northern Hemisphere, at least in Europe and in the USA. It's looking like it might be a pretty rough winter in terms of the restrictions that Coronavirus is gonna apply on us. And so I guess this is just an opportunity for us to take a step back and reflect on all that we have been through this year so far. If there's an industry that has been massively impacted by COVID, it is the fitness industry. I mean, there are other ones as well, but I don't care about them. I'm talking to you guys. I'm talking to the instructors. Think about how far you have come this year. Think about the skills that you had at the beginning of 2020. And the skills that you have now, think about your ability to deal with adversity earlier in the year, and how you can just roll with the punches now. Yeah, it sucks like it does, it really sucks not to be able to teach classes to people, but we have this amazing opportunity to still reach people digitally. And that's something that we have to embrace. And just take a moment to reflect on your own personal growth. And this could be personal emotional growth, or just growth an industry that you've been in for a while. I know that there are a lot of instructors who listen to this podcast that have been teaching for, you know, 15 to 20 years. And they have probably gone through more learning and more change and more development in the last year than they did in the previous 10. And that is something that you should really be proud of. So if you are one of those instructors who has struggled with 2020, but has made it through maybe you are continuing to struggle, I just want to say you are doing well keep on going the only way is through. And as a community of like minded individuals and people that listen to this show. I want you to give each other a pat on the back to continue to support the rest of the fitness industry support other instructors and make sure that when we get to the other end of this, which we will we are stronger for it. And if you want to have the occasional glass of wine, then I say go for it.

Thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, don't forget to subscribe for all the latest episodes wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please drop us a review. You can also get in touch with me at will@sh1ftfitness.com. I'm Will Brereton and you've been listening to Group Fitness Real Talk.