We were lucky to catch up with Kyle Ligon recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kyle, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?

When we started our gym back in 2012, it was just my partner, Blake Holman, and me. We had tons of passion and were extremly excited to build our business, but it wasn’t until I was 100% owner and finally took the time to define why the business exists, its main purpose, and its core values that the gym could really build some momentum. There were MANY business books, but one in particular the helped us nail down our specifics was Traction by Gino Wickman. Once the business, the coaches, and the clients were all clear on the direction we were trying to go, the momentum we gained was enormous.

Now that we have defined our business, we hire, promote, fire, and make all of our decisions based on our core values. When we interview, we ask a lot of questions to get people talking and through that we are looking for five main things:
1) Are they someone who take extreme ownership of things in their life or are they looking for other factors to blame for things that haven’t gone perfectly in their life?
2) Do they have a growth mindset and are they life-long learners or do they “already know everything.” I’ll take less experience and a hunger to learn every time over someone who thinks they are finished learning.
3) Do they have that 6th sense of making other people feel welcome and comfortable? Regardless of age, race, gender, career, or anything else, do they view themselves as no more or less important than others?
4) Do they get what the job is, do they want the job, and do they have the capacity to do the job.
5) Do they meet the minimum requirements of the position?

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Currently, I own and operate CrossFit City Limits and MovementLink.FIT. To fit in with the hiring employees question, I think it’s only fitting to share the high level purpose and core values of the businesses.

In general, what is the business?
+We are a gym community where people know each other’s names, smile, feel comfortable and feel welcome, but are physically pushed to grow beyond what they think they are capable of.
+Our gym is their 3rd home.
+A place where we lean into tradition when it makes sense and will break the mold when tradition is outdated.
+A community led by passionate coaches that aims at helping members and coaches create and live incredible lives.

Why do we exist?
+To profoundly improve people’s lives.
How:
+Social Connections
+P.A.T.H. Results – Performance, Aesthetics, Tissue and Joint Health, and Overall Health and Wellness
+Supporting Lifelong Learning and Personal Growth in every aspect of life.

Core Values

It’s Your Life
+Everything is a Choice. We don’t let fear or what feels like the easy path override our ability to make the choices that would help us become who we want to be.
+We take Extreme Ownership of everything in our world. We don’t sit back and blame others. We identify our role, no matter how big or how small, and we do everything we can to improve everything in our world.
+We keep our Focus on what we can Control and we are Extremely Proactive with everything in our world.
+We Plan and Prep for the Knowable and therefore make the knowable look easy. We Simply Show Up, Keep Trying, and Hang In There when the unknowable inevitably comes.
+We do not Automatically Accept the Status Quo as the best option or the best practice. Instead of blindly following what experts do, we seek to understand and then test and adopt what works within our specific contexts. This process is never ending.
+To maximize the choices we have in life, we create a Buffer Zone of Health and Functional Fitness. We embrace the reality that there are certain non-negotiable aspects of lifestyle, like sleep, nutrition, exercise, non-exercise activity, stress management, etc., that need to be prioritized to be able to take advantage of life’s opportunities for as long as possible.

We Maintain a Growth Mindset
+Our Successes and Failures Say Nothing Inherent About Us and are ultimately determined by the type and quality of our efforts.
+Our Past is the Reason Why, but Not an Excuse to Continue. We accept the reality that ideas, feelings, successes, and failures are only snapshots of all of life’s efforts and experiences to that point. These moments do not say anything about how we (or others) will think, how we will choose to act, or what we are capable of in the future.
+We Embrace and Learn from Failure. As failures are inevitable and an extremely good teacher, we plan for and embrace the scenario of failure. Not planning and not acting is the only failure, so we get out there, try things out, so we can get closer to the right track sooner.
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a particular field.” – Neils Bohr
+We are Brave. If we are scared or uncomfortable, it is simply an opportunity to be brave. We do not let the inevitable emotions of fear, nervousness, and anxiety stop us from doing what we want or need to do. We don’t have to be perfect, just brave.
+We are Life-ling Learners and seek to take an honest look at ourselves and develop our weaknesses. We are wrong about a lot of things. We seek the truth, not to be right.

Every Person Every Time
+Is on Our Team and is made to feel welcome and like they belong.
+No One is More or Less Important than we are.
+Everyone deserves to have a Fair Opportunity and the freedom to do whatever they want with those opportunities. When opportunities arise, we are going to take advantage of everything we can.
+Before we judge or provide coaching, We Seek First to Understand. Until the person in front of us knows that we understand their story, they cannot fully trust what we have to offer.
+We only look for Win-Win.
+We communicate and take feedback with Candor and Compassion with the intent to understand and help.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Of course I have a biased perspective as I am the owner, but I think our reputation has been built by defining our core values, making them public, talking about them all the time (can’t you tell in this article, haha), and ALWAYS doing our best to abide by them. Our values are not lip service. Through our values, we defined how we want ourselves to act and so even when it means we take a harder road, we always use our values as our North Star.

Our reputation is that we are simply trying to provide the best customer experience possible. We do not think we are done improving, ever, and if someone wants to know what we would do in a certain scenario, they could simply look at our core values, our business, and our methods and our choices will fit in line 100% of the time.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I am a life-long learner who wants to be surrounded by life-long learners. I only have room on my teams for people who are obsessed with self improvement.

I expect my team to:
+Share my values
+Be growth oriented themselves
+Take feedback

I do not want them to be “Yes” people. I live by my values, am a life-long learner, and expect my team to provide me feedback with candor and compassion. When they see that it is a two-way street of growth for the good of the team, maintaining high morale is easy, because we all just want the best for each other.

Contact Info:

• Website: movementlink.fit
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crossfitcitylimits/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsSClurqLhpyKKGpcXh4DVw