You are a CEO… So if you don’t knowwwww, now you know.

Hey you.  Yeah, YOU!  Did you know that you are the CEO of a company?? Believe it or not, you have actually been the CEO of a company since the day you started taking care of yourself – just nobody told you. But you are. You are the CEO of your body. The overseer of the “business.”  And do you know who I am?  I’m a consultant. I’m the guy CEO’s go to to help them take their businesses to the next level. Let’s talk for a minute, shall we?

First thing I do as a consultant is to find out which employees (muscles) have been going to work, and which ones have been getting “paid” (in calories) for doing nothing. This is an important check because for the business to be as “profitable” as possible, we need every employee we’ve got contributing to the cause. We also need YOU, our CEO to understand and embrace this fundamental.
In my initial assessment/talks with CEO’s I always ask the question, “what do you do for your workouts?” Most common female CEO’s answer with something like 30-45 minutes of treadmill or elliptical and 10-15 minutes of abs and weights (typically meaning doing a bunch of crunches followed by 5 lb dumbbell curls and tricep kickbacks). Most common males answer with something like, on monday I do chest, on tuesday I do back, on weds I do legs, etc… (When probed further this typically breaks down to I do the same chest and bicep exercises at the same weight every single time I go to the gym and I never really do legs.) If CEO’s don’t go to a gym the most common answer is I go running (jogging) x-number of times per week.

What these answers show me as the consultant is that these CEO’s either DON’T KNOW the benefit of sending all of their employees to work, or they DON’T KNOW HOW to send all of their employees to work. This stuff needs to be addressed Day 1. Every one of those employees has the potential to help your company be the best it possibly can be, but if you’re not sending them to work you are playing with only half the deck! You see this works in two ways. One, when you recruit more muscles (employees) you enhance your strength potential for any given exercise (just like in business if you get the whole team to help on a project). This leads to tougher work getting accomplished which leads to bigger returns. Additionally, when you stimulate and activate more muscles (employees) they in turn create a need for additional energy (passive calorie burn) to repair/recover from the work. This means that you get more accomplished WHILE working out and more accomplished AFTER working out. WIN-WIN!

So what’s wrong with just going running one CEO might say. “My whole body is sweating and I get completely exhausted by the end of it!” I feel like I DO workout everything when I play soccer or basketball! OKOK slow down, don’t get defensive. Running and playing sports are both awesome things to do – these activities will get your heartrate up (your heart is a very important employee mind you) and while they have a ton of benefits, they fail on the side of being fully stimulating all of your employees to work.  Herein lies the secret to sending everyone in your company to work: you need to put your joints – both upper and lower – through a full range of motion under significant load. This will provide you with improved strength, flexibility, and joint health.

How do you do that?? Well, luckily, it’s fairly simple. There are 6 movements that you need to be doing to achieve this end.

1. Squatting (ie Back squats, front squats, overhead squats, goblet squats, pistol squats etc.)
2. Hip Hinging (ie Deadlifts, good mornings, pull-throughs, swings, etc.)
3. Horizontal pushing (ie Bench press, push-ups, 1 arm dumbbell bench press etc.)
4. Horizontal pulling (ie Bent over rows, seated rows, cable rows, etc.)
5. Vertical Pushing (ie Military press, 1 arm overhead press, push press, etc.)
6. Vertical Pulling (ie Pullups, Pulldowns, Chinups, etc.)

These are called compound movements and they are the way by which you can ensure that you are getting everyone in the company on board. Keeping with the business analogy, these you can think of as being like IRA’s – if stocks are individual muscle groups, these movements hit multiple stocks all at the same time giving you a bigger bang for your buck. “BUT I LIKE RUNNING AND PLAYING SOCCER!” Awesome! Keep doing it but supplement your program with these movements. “BUT I LIKE DOING MY BICEP CURLS AND TRICEP KICKBACKS!” No problem. You can still invest into individual stocks if you so desire, however the worse off the company is (more out of shape you are), the less you will see a payoff for your time. Investing in individual stocks (muscle groups) typically won’t give you a good return until you are out of the RED. The more “profitable” your business becomes, the more you can have fun putting “money” into individual stocks. Until you start rollin in dough, I would highly recommend you put your effort into these bigger, higher ROI exercises. It’s the difference between using a sledge hammer to knock down a wall versus a chisel.

Ok I get it, so my muscles are my employees… I need to send them all to work… Is there anything else? Honestly, yes. There is a ton more that we could talk about, but I want to hit on just a few key things to keep this short.

1. These workers of yours have a pretty damn easy job. They only have to go to work for 1 hour at a time and if you send them 3 hours a week you are doing great! However, that hour is slave labor – especially at first. Be ready for them (in particular the guys who have been sitting around getting paid for doing nothing) to retaliate and complain. “I’m tired! I’m sore! I’m thirsty! I don’t like this! Let’s just stay home!” They’ll say. This is where you need to be a strong BOSS who is assertive and actually takes charge! You need to be ready to hear their complaints and tell them to DEAL WITH IT! Or if you need reinforcement, get a good consultant who can come and help support you in your decision.
2. You need to be a good boss! One that employees WANT TO WORK FOR! That means that after cracking the whip for an hour and muting their complaints, it is time to treat them WELL! How do you do this?

• Feed them WELL!! Give them good food like steak, baked chicken, and salmon with all you can eat veggies! Keep them hydrated with plenty of water. Feeding them shit like pop tarts or junk food isn’t going to be motivating for them. Would you want to work for a boss who took you out to a crappy restaurant as reward for your hard work?
• Give them SPA DAYS once and awhile! Stretching, massage and epsom salt baths are LUXURIES for these guys! Treat them well and they will come back more willing and able than ever to work EVEN HARDER for you!
• Give them plenty of sleep! Asking them to work hard for you after you kept them up all night looking at your damn cell phone is inexcusable. Everyone works better and feels better after a good night’s sleep.
• Listen to them! If one of them comes to you with an HR issue (pain) and you can tell it is in earnest, be willing to give them time off. Pushing them after they warn you can be a huge mistake in the long term.
• Let them have SOME FUN! Nobody likes a micromanager and at some point we all will fight back against too much restriction. Learning to balance work and reward will be one of the most difficult obstacles in improving your business, but it is also the most important for achieving your goals WHILE maintaining a happy and satisfying life.

Alright, hopefully some of this hits home and is useful for you to improve your business. I can assure you that I have had countless CEO’s come to me looking for help to achieve specific ends – some want a leaner company, some want a bigger company, some simply want their company to feel better and be healthier. In all cases what I try to help them achieve is OWNERSHIP over the business. The development of strength in your body comes SECOND to the development of strength in your MIND. The ability to grow and enable YOUR VOICE to have a louder and stronger vote than the voice of the rest of the company (get ready, hamstrings like to bitch a lot at first) is paramount to achieving profitability in the coming years.

It was a pleasure meeting you. If you are interested in talking more, feel free to reach out. My email is Dan@Sigafit.com ;)