From Gymnast to Global Guru: Jeff Lulla's Journey in Shaping the Gymnastics Business Landscape | Ep 63

In this captivating episode of Paradigm Playbook, Steve Cook introduces us to the inspiring world of Jeff Lulla, a renowned figure in the gymnastics community. As the founder of Fun & Fit Gymnastics, Jeff has spent over three decades shaping the world of recreational gymnastics, both as a passionate coach and a visionary business leader.

Jeff's journey, from a competitive gymnast to a multi-faceted educator and business strategist, is a testament to his dedication and impact on the sport. His recognition as the USA Gymnastics Business Leader of the Year and role as a Business Ambassador speak volumes about his influence in the gymnastics community.

With over 25 years of experience in teaching the USA Gymnastics Safety Certification course and authoring various curriculums, Jeff has become a pivotal figure in shaping educational standards in gymnastics. His expertise is not confined to the US alone; Jeff has shared his knowledge and insights at industry congresses across the USA, Canada, and Australia, and at the Cal Elite Summit, a personal development conference.

Jeff's global reach extends through his consulting work, having advised clients in diverse countries such as China, Vietnam, Australia, the UK, the USA, and Canada. His innovative Fun & Fit Gymnastics Program, a comprehensive instructor training and lesson planning system, has been a game-changer in the field. Since its inception in 1991, the program has been licensed to hundreds of gym clubs worldwide and is now accessible online through the LEAP Learning and Smart Moves platforms.

In this episode, Steve and Jeff explore the intricacies of transforming a passion for sports into a thriving business. They delve into the challenges and triumphs of managing a successful sports enterprise, discussing the importance of safety, technology, class behavior management, and effective employment practices. Jeff's insights into preschool and recreational education provide invaluable lessons for all ages.

Whether you're a gymnastics enthusiast, a business owner in the sports industry, or someone intrigued by the fusion of athletics and entrepreneurship, this episode offers a unique perspective on success, innovation, and leadership in the dynamic world of gymnastics. Join us in discovering Jeff Lulla's extraordinary journey and the valuable lessons it holds for anyone aspiring to make an impact in their field.

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Transcript

Are you ready to learn and discover new ideas? We want to hear from you. Share your questions, thoughts and ideas for the Paradigm Playbook podcast. We value your input and want to create episodes that match your interests. Leave a comment. Or send us an email at Playbook. At Paradigm Playbook dot com. Hello and welcome to Paradigm Playbook. This is Steve Cook.

00;00;24;10 - 00;00;55;07
Unknown
I'm coming to you from out of the studio today. We're on location in beautiful San Jose, California at the USA Gymnastics National Championships and coaches Congress. It's exciting time here. And if you're hearing cheering or screaming in the background, that's what we're doing here. So this is a first step out into what we're calling Meet the Playmakers. And we're going to be bringing interviews to you from influential people throughout the business of sports.

00;00;55;09 - 00;01;22;00
Unknown
And today we're lucky. We have Jeff Lowe on here with us. And rather than go through his whole intro myself, I'm going to let Jeff introduce himself to you. So, Jeff, why don't you give us your your elevator pitch background and a little bit about what brought you to this point in the world of sports? Well, first of all, thank you for having me here, Steve.

00;01;22;00 - 00;01;41;12
Unknown
And my background in sports. I was I was never really good at sports when I was a kid. I was always small and the youngest one of my class and I'd always get hurt. And anybody threw a ball out of me, knocked me down and and all the bigger kids play baseball and football and all of this, all those jock sports.

00;01;41;12 - 00;02;03;06
Unknown
And it wasn't until I discovered gymnastics that I had any kind of success in sport, and it really changed my life and made me think differently about myself and my capabilities. That wasn't until I actually got up on the rigs in high school for the first time, and I could actually lift myself up under the rings. Something to all the bigger, stronger guys actually couldn't do it.

00;02;03;08 - 00;02;25;01
Unknown
But I was small light and I was able to get up there and so I got I got on the varsity team and like I said, that changed my life. And from there I volunteered to teach at a local YMCA. And I loved working with the kids and I liked the feeling of being in the gym and sharing what I learned and made that my career.

00;02;25;03 - 00;02;54;00
Unknown
So from that point, as a competitor and coach, I know you jump quickly into the business world, so tell us about your entry and being a club owner and and where you are now. Wow. Well, that was quite a journey. I went from coaching to being a program director for another club, and then I really got into that leadership role and dreamed of opening my own gym.

00;02;54;03 - 00;03;19;00
Unknown
And so finally when I pulled the trigger and I didn't know it, I didn't know, you know, I learned a lot of lessons on the way to becoming an employer and what that meant and opening a business that I loved. I love teaching kids, but I realized that I was the captain's lay in ship and I needed to be on the bridge of the ship and not down in the engine room, so to speak.

00;03;19;00 - 00;03;47;07
Unknown
You know, I had to get myself, you know, give myself the time to in the business, which meant I had to take myself off the teaching schedule. And I needed to, as I opened up more locations, replicate myself by video with myself doing my staff training. And that kind of evolved into the video training program for the son of the gymnastics program that I used to my own staff.

00;03;47;07 - 00;04;06;29
Unknown
I shared it. Now the U.S. Gymnastics Congress, like the one we're here today, back in the nineties and a few people here in the room here and we talked about my teaching system came up to the front of the room afterwards and said, Hey, Jeff, to raise your teaching system, why reinvent the wheel? And I said, Well, sure, I guess so.

00;04;06;29 - 00;04;42;12
Unknown
And I started licensing funding set back in the 1992. I think it was. And as more and more gyms started using my system, my would be called the curriculum host a reward system. I started getting input from all of these people that were licensees making suggestions, and I added more videos and added more levels. And it evolved from originally 540 skills to 1400 skill progressions, games and drills and 17 different level courses that are now in deep learning.

00;04;42;14 - 00;05;13;03
Unknown
So it's okay. Journey Yeah, it's a, it's a very jam packed library of information and those that have been on the podcast with us previously, I've heard Dave and I talked so much about the process in business and curriculum is just one of those processes that you have to manage. We talk all the time about one of the hardest thing for an entrepreneur is to to spend less time working in their business and a lot more time working on their business, right?

00;05;13;06 - 00;05;53;25
Unknown
So it seems like you did that. So I know you've developed this system of duplication and through meet learning and your curriculums. And I here's my take on it. Yeah. The thought is that because you've invest thousands of hours to develop this, that should save somebody else thousands of hours and allow them to work on another process. And I think very often in sports, I find a lot of us and maybe I'm guilty of this in the past too, is, you know, we walk into the gym or onto the playing field and we wing it.

00;05;53;27 - 00;06;18;18
Unknown
And I think two reasons you don't want to wing it, you're not giving your best to the athletes. And two, it's not reproducible. So when you go to sell it down the road, you don't have that process in place. Am I on the right track here? Yeah. You know, what I've learned is that and now, of course, the good business and mature business is managed by systems.

00;06;18;20 - 00;06;41;00
Unknown
And in fact, that's why people buy franchises is they're actually buying a proven system and they're paying a lot of money for somebody else's system. But the benefit is that you don't have to do it all yourself. You can step right in and it's it's you news a a successful proven system. You can expect similar results to every time of what other people have gotten from the system.

00;06;41;00 - 00;07;06;16
Unknown
It's the system that runs the business. And as soon as I learn that, you know, there's a great book called The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. Yeah. But he talks about businesses and their infancy, adolescence and maturity. And the whole thing about that is the myth is that businesses in America are run by entrepreneurs. And his his comments are like, No, it's actually the run by technicians.

00;07;06;19 - 00;07;24;14
Unknown
Most of the time we have what he calls an entrepreneurial seizure, which I think is a funny way of looking at it. You behave like an entrepreneur for a brief period of time when you sign a lease and open a business. But then, well, most of us business owners do is make the mistake of going back and doing the work that we used to do.

00;07;24;15 - 00;07;50;02
Unknown
And here it is for somebody else because they're familiar with that. They go back and be gone before we culture, we do the things that we used to do as employees and then nobody's running the business and that that's the mistake. But a mature business is run by systems and the owner of the business is managing the systems and modifying the systems and making the changes needed over time to improve all the systems as the business grows.

00;07;50;04 - 00;08;08;11
Unknown
And once I figured that out, I, I changed my focus. And that was hard because I love coaching. Yeah, I think we've all been through that. And you're right, it's a great book and we talk. Dave and I talk about books all the time, and The Math and E-Myth Revisited are great books and we really have enjoyed that.

00;08;08;11 - 00;08;34;02
Unknown
One of the great quotes from that book, I think I can attribute it to Michael Gerber, is that a lot of us have that entrepreneurial seizure because we're working in a business. We know we're good, we're probably better than the guy running the business. And he says far too often you go from thinking you're working for an idiot to being the idiot, so you don't want to make the same mistakes.

00;08;34;08 - 00;09;03;22
Unknown
So when you do that, you put the systems in place and this side of the processing that you're on is really curriculum. You know, the teaching. So I think there's there's two key elements that I'll ask you to speak to. One is, you know how a curriculum is put together and then how leap learning or your curriculum packages make training employees so much easier.

00;09;03;25 - 00;09;36;08
Unknown
Thank you for listening. Visit Paradigm Playbook dot com to discover how we can support you and your business. Yeah well that's that's a really good point. The curriculum is only one of the necessary tools for getting it implemented and actually making sure that's being done correctly does require some. So some mentoring and some other important aspects of the business because, you know, you can have all these great tools, you have all this equipment and you have the space and it's padded and you've got all the curriculum in the lesson plans and all that.

00;09;36;08 - 00;10;16;03
Unknown
But the culture of the business is so important. You know, the people that are in there and the enthusiasm and the joy that they bring to the delivery of the system, you know, having what to teach, which is the curriculum, is only one aspect, then you've got to get into how we teach, which is all about the behaviors, the soft systems, you know, the way we talk to the kids and the parents and and the way the gym feels and smells and just all of the senses that the customers experience, you know, and what they experience when they walk in the gym and how people talk to them and each other.

00;10;16;03 - 00;10;53;28
Unknown
And all of that becomes part and important part of what makes a business thrive. It's not just curriculum. So the training program, the way I look at it, Steve, is there's there's two points. One is to be very, very clear and specific about exactly what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, where it needs to be done, and what it needs to be done, and who's going to do it, which means you have to hire the right people based on their character and their integrity and then provide to them everything that they need in such a way that they know exactly what your expectations are.

00;10;54;01 - 00;11;19;02
Unknown
And you know, but you look at the organizational pyramid where you imagine a pyramid where the top of the pyramid is the owner or the board of directors, and then underneath is senior management. Below that is is the lower level management. And below that are the people that actually do the work. And underneath everything is the customer. And that is the traditional pyramid of the hierarchy of, of all of a business.

00;11;19;04 - 00;11;44;17
Unknown
But I find works is to flip it upside down. And at the bottom now is the owner or the board, and they need to look at themselves as being of service to their senior managers, that the owners job is what do I need to do to serve them? What tools do they need? And what training do they need?

00;11;44;17 - 00;12;07;25
Unknown
What support do they need from me as the owner so that they can do their job? And then their job is to do the same to their civilians? So if everybody believes they're in service of their subordinates and say, What do you need for me? Instead of telling downward, this is what you need to do, it's a much more successful paradigm.

00;12;07;27 - 00;12;34;02
Unknown
Once I stepped off the floor and I'm watching my people do their jobs, I would always think, What can I do to help them get back? You know, there's a special part of gymnastics that I'm always very, very proud of. And you know, everybody knows that. That's my background. Jeff and I come from the same world, gymnastics world, coaching, competing coaching, business owners.

00;12;34;04 - 00;13;06;01
Unknown
But one of the things that's unique about gymnastics and it's built into the curriculum is that and I think this is significant, is that we are taught to build skills, whereas other sports. So if we want to teach a cartwheel, we start with the standing position, the first foot lunge, which was the toe pointed and then the first, you know, your front knee lean forward a straight line from hands to heel.

00;13;06;08 - 00;13;26;13
Unknown
All of these things are little things. And then it leads into we're slowly building a skill. The difference in in other sports is and then I'm also involved with baseball. We have baseball coaches. You walk in and they say, Yeah, and take a swing and let me look at it and I'll see what I can do with it.

00;13;26;15 - 00;13;46;21
Unknown
Well, it it's akin to us saying here, come on and do a backflip and I'll see what I can do with it. Yes, well it doesn't work that way. So I think what we so everybody thought about building skills and you build your curriculum around building skills. Now Leap learning is much more than just gymnastics, am I correct?

00;13;46;24 - 00;14;13;05
Unknown
Right, Right. The learning is a learning management platform and it currently has several programs written by different authors with different areas of expertise. We have the pitch gymnastics program, which is the beauty of the the program that I authored, but we also have Swim Engine, which is a Learn to Swim instructor training program. We have a special needs program called Spectra Abilities.

00;14;13;05 - 00;14;51;24
Unknown
We're an expert in dealing with children on the spectrum. That training program. We have a jump for Joy, which is focused on trampoline progressions and tumbling progressions by an expert in that field. And we also have a ninja program and we have a preschool sports. So all of these different experts in these different areas have put their training into the platform and then business owners can subscribe to whichever one or all of them and then assign the specific training to their staff based on their own business needs.

00;14;51;27 - 00;15;19;14
Unknown
And then also all of the authors are available as consultants to support and nurture the training and help go to them either online or on site, provide mentoring, which is it's a boy. I just when I opened my businesses, there was nothing like that. I had to do everything myself. And and I really think that this is a wonderful opportunity now for businesses not to have to reinvent the wheel, but to bring in all these different experts with experience.

00;15;19;17 - 00;15;43;20
Unknown
And well, it's similar and this has happened in all businesses. If you decide that I want to open up a donut shop and you can make it a Krispy Kreme or or a Dunkin Donuts or whatever, you don't have to, then research and figure out the recipe for making a donut. But somebody you know is there to teach you how to do that.

00;15;43;25 - 00;16;04;19
Unknown
So I look at as let me jump in and say that the unique thing about those are franchises and they share in your revenue forever. Yeah, they get royalties. And the thing about something like deep learning or services from third level consulting is that these are partners you can part with. You can use their system and only pay a subscription fee and not have a royalty.

00;16;04;21 - 00;16;22;02
Unknown
And if you want more from them, if you want them to come in and help train your staff, you can pay them hourly as needed on the road and then they're gone and you don't have them in bed with you. So they're ready to become a partner in your business right there. Unlike a franchise, it's a service to a franchise.

00;16;22;02 - 00;16;50;18
Unknown
But I think to your point is, I think our number one point is that you need curriculum. You need a process in your business, whether you're teaching baseball or lacrosse or field hockey, you have to have a process that you're going to teach. That's yeah. So whether you you buy it through leap learning, which in essence you're buying or you invest the time to hire someone to write it for you or you invest your own time.

00;16;50;20 - 00;17;13;28
Unknown
So one of Michael Gerber's points is that as an entrepreneur, you have to value your time. And if you if you dig deep into it and if it turns out the way it is, whether you're at the bottom of the pyramid that you talked about or the top, you should be the highest level of employee in there. So your time is more valuable than anyone else's.

00;17;14;00 - 00;17;47;09
Unknown
You know, that is such an important point. And at different times of your life, your values change. You know, there's a point when you're at the beginning of your business, when you're really your budget is so important. You think the dollars are really the key, but really in life and we look back at your life, the most valuable thing you have is time, because whether you're a billionaire or you're working minimum wage, we all only are on this earth for a limited amount of time and you don't get any more of it.

00;17;47;09 - 00;18;13;27
Unknown
None of us have any control of that. So you start to the older you get, the more experienced you get. You start to value your time more and more. And so delegating tasks becomes such an important thing because it frees your time. Anything that you're doing as an entrepreneur and you always need to start asking as soon as you can and you get the resources to to get other people and to support your team.

00;18;13;29 - 00;18;45;22
Unknown
So what what can I give to other people to do this on my time so that I can stay focused on the direction of my ship? Yeah, that's awesome. And before we wrap this up, I want to I'll do one more book recommendation and this is kind of a thing with Dave and I. Dave and I first got together because we would sit around and talk about a book we read, but there's another book called Multipliers, and they're the people that do things that make themselves more valuable by teaching it to someone else.

00;18;45;24 - 00;19;11;20
Unknown
And I think, Jeff, you and I have this in common right now. We're at this point in life where, you know, we started out as teachers and now we're we're rounding out as teachers and trying to help other people. Kind of the point of this podcast is to to bring ideas to other people. So before we wrap up, if someone wants to get in touch with you to learn more about deep learning or just to pick your brain, what's the best way?

00;19;11;20 - 00;19;34;03
Unknown
Are you available on social media? How can people find you? Sure. So my website is fun and gymnastics dot com and that that way they can reach me directly and then they can learn more about deep learning. And I might have to get a program and the services that I provide. And just as a closing thought, when you said that you set about recommending books, I've got one that.

00;19;34;03 - 00;19;56;08
Unknown
Okay, that's good. We love this. The seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And that made a big difference in my life. I'm talking about the big rocks, helping me reframe in my mind what matters most. Yeah, that's another topic. Stephen Covey. And yeah, the listeners have heard that book brought up many, many times. We love that book. So Jeff, thank you for your time today.

00;19;56;09 - 00;20;09;27
Unknown
I appreciate it. We'll do this again and everybody make it a great day and contact us if you want more information. Thank you. Did we help you learn, grow and improve? Leave us a review to let us know how we're doing. Thank you.