The Fit to Grit Cast
Fit to Grit is an audio/video/newsletter hybrid featuring in-depth conversations with leadership within the athletic space. Guests range from top executives within the athletic space to professionals in adjacent industries with a proven track record of success working in the athletic industry.
We explore visionary ideas and practical strategies driving the industry forward, covering areas such as marketing, finance, branding, equipment, product development, biz dev, and more. Join us as we share actionable insights and real-world experiences while embodying the "fit to grit" spirit.
The Fit to Grit Cast
Turning Disability into a Superpower: Creating an Inclusive Business Culture
Disability isn't a limitation—it's a superpower. That's the transformative message Kevin McCann brings to our latest conversation on the Fit to Grit podcast. Born with cerebral palsy that affects his ability to walk independently, Kevin has turned his lived experience into a powerful platform for advocacy and business transformation.
After being rejected by ten consecutive news directors who saw his disability as a liability rather than recognizing his qualifications, Kevin reinvented himself as a speaker who helps businesses understand the competitive advantage of inclusive hiring. The irony? Organizations now pay him to tell the story others once rejected.
"Hiring someone with a disability isn't charity," Kevin emphasizes during our conversation. "It allows you to create a competitive advantage over your competition." He backs this claim with compelling statistics: 63% of people with disabilities don't require accommodations at all, and 80% of accommodations cost less than $500. Meanwhile, 92% of consumers support businesses that employ people with disabilities.
Kevin's framework—the Three C's of Culture, Commitment, and Connection—provides a roadmap for organizations looking to build more inclusive environments. For fitness facilities specifically, Kevin offers practical insights on how inclusive hiring can expand clientele and improve systems. People with disabilities excel in roles requiring routine and structure, making them ideal candidates for positions like membership engagement representatives or front-desk staff.
Perhaps most powerfully, Kevin shares examples of how simple accommodations can lead to extraordinary outcomes, like the McDonald's employee with a disability who, with some basic systems in place, went on to win Employee of the Year. "It's all about making systems and processes more efficient and effective," Kevin notes. "The most effective way you can do that is to have a diverse workforce."
Ready to transform your understanding of disability and business? Listen to this episode, then connect with Kevin at kevinmccanspeaks.com or through his podcast "Let's Have This Conversation." Your next competitive advantage might be hiding in plain sight.
Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://creatitive.com/fit-to-grit-cast/
One of the things I tell businesses all the time is that you have to find what that person is passionate about and what their purpose is in order for them to be the maximum amount of value of your organization.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Fit to Grit cast, where, you know, we sit down and talk through all those visionary ideas that come to us during our normal daily visionary time. I'm your host, zach Coleman, and today I have a special guest. I was on his podcast late last year it seems like it was already forever ago now. But, kevin, why don't you tell everyone a little bit about yourself, what you do, where you are? All that fun stuff.
Speaker 1:Exactly. It's always great to see you and I thank you so much for the invitation. It's most appreciated. Yeah, and I found out at the age of nine that I wouldn't be able to walk without assistance for the duration of my life because of the severity of my CPD. But I always tell myself that everyone's portrait of success is different. It's incumbent upon all of us, you know, to sort of put our life compass in the direction that we want to go. So that's a little bit about my life and my motto, my friend.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful. Well, and you know I think we you know I'd have to go back and watch our cast on your channel but I know we kind of brought up a little bit about your passions and what you're trying to do right now within the studio space itself. But before we kind of get there, we can kind of lean into that as we get further along. Speaking, becoming a public speaker already is when I went to do my TEDx. I remember someone coming to me afterwards and being like you did it, man. Only you know that public speaking is by far the biggest fear us people have and one of the biggest fears still had. You know other challenges that you know you have to go through with your condition and I'd love to you know, hear a little bit more about your motivation and your grit, on how you were able to continue to achieve so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the reason I became a speaker, zach, was a bit by accident, because when I graduated college so I graduated college with a journalism degree and I spent six and a half years outside of college after I graduated looking for employment as a journalist, no one would hire me because I was rejected by 10 consecutive news directors at the time who told me that I was qualified to be a reporter but because of my disability, they viewed me as a liability in the newsroom and they were afraid that they didn't have enough resources to support me as a liability in the newsroom and they were afraid that they didn't have enough resources to support me as a journalist. So I became a speaker because, you know, I wanted to advocate for folks that look like me in terms of having gainful employment. So I talk to businesses and corporations about building an inclusive culture with minimal effort and I tell them all about the benefits of hiring folks with disabilities and they pay me now to tell my own story. Isn't that great?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's awesome. I love the fact that you were able to get over a hurdle that even people without disability have a hard time getting over right. You set a high bar and you did a very good job at being able to allow yourself to know that, hey, I can do it too. I can do it too right. And I'd love to you know, dive a little bit more into that culture aspect, like, tell me a little bit about that, the culture, and really just the types of things within the culture and, um, really just the types of things within the culture that you help these, these corporations do yeah.
Speaker 1:so when I talk to businesses we talk about three main things. I talk to them about the business case is hiring people with disabilities because you know, 63 percent of uh people with disabilities don't require accommodations at all and 80% of accommodations for folks with disabilities are less than $500. So we make the business case on why it's important to hire folks with disabilities, what they can bring to your organization from a competitive advantage side in terms of increased innovation and increased productivity. We also talk about the resilience and that morale boost that bringing people with disabilities on will bring to your organization. And the other thing we talk to them about is hiring someone with a disability isn't charity. It allows you to create a competitive advantage over your competition. So we always turn the disability into a superpower and let people know the positive benefits of what they can get out of an investment of hiring folks with disabilities.
Speaker 1:And I also go through my own personal stories that because you know, for years I was in speech therapy because my words didn't always catch up to how fast my brain was trying to take them. So I was in speech therapy for years because I was a timid speaker at one point in my life because, you know my words ran together, so I look at life as a grand adventure, zach, and what I do for organizations and operations is make them more how you know, innovation and inclusivity sort of have a connected tissue, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it kind of goes off of a little bit.
Speaker 2:You know, when I was on your cast, we talked about my three C's of branding, and one of them is connection.
Speaker 2:Right, and I think that what you're talking about right now, especially with using it as a superpower aspect, is definitely a sign of really connecting and creating a culture around not just the people you're trying to serve, but the internal culture you're trying to develop, really just showcasing to the world like hey, we're people too, right, Like hey, like we can do just as much, you know, and and being able to showcase that.
Speaker 2:I mean that's branding in a nutshell, if you really think about it, because you're, you're communicating a sense of pride, a sense of contribution and a sense of faith that you're an organization that lives off of the or you're not, you're, you're really not just one of those corporations, just just that, just in it for the money, right, it's really what it comes down to. And so tell me a little bit more about maybe one of your three, your three things that you talk about, like, dive into one of them a little bit more. Can you give me a little bit more of an example? Uh, so that the people that are watching this could get a little bit of a taste of maybe some of the things that you come in and help teach.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'll go with the acronym that I use most often, and it's the three C's, zach, it's culture, as we've talked about.
Speaker 1:It's also making the commitments and it's also making the connection.
Speaker 1:That it's also making the connection. You know, one of the things I tell businesses all the time is that it's always important to look at people for the merit of their skills rather than trying to fit them into a job. You know, it's all about creating their own personal professional identity, and what I mean by that is you have to find what that person is passionate about and what their purpose is in order for them to be the maximum amount of value for your organization. So I talk to businesses about the importance of working alongside jobs that you give a disability to maximize their value, and what I mean by that is working with them to find out what is their why in terms of why they want to be a part of this organization, and how can you use their strengths and abilities to bring their organization to the next level. So I talked to organizations a lot about culture, commitment and connection, the three C's of sort of the combining of employment, inclusivity exclusivity, I think, is a phenomenal direction to go here.
Speaker 2:Um, because you know, as I mentioned at the beginning of this cast, like the fit to grit cast focuses very heavily on you could say from a nutshell the athletic community. You know, you look at from surface level it's, it's athletic, but that's not really what fit to grit nor the athletic community. It's that surface level, I think, in the, in the midst level of all of that is and what it really stands for being able to follow your dreams through motivation that come into long term goals, which is very similar to how corporations need to look at their goals for how they grow what they do. And because we work within, we talk a lot about, you know, we talk, I talk a lot about studios and we talk a lot about the athletic community. I know that we kind of touched on this on your cast a little bit on the benefits that going in and the athletic community could derive from bringing in people with disabilities.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll tell you a little bit about my disability and sort of why fitness is important to me and how it translates into the work I do. So I was born with a condition called a spastic quandary, polyd dystrophy of repulsive. It simply means that I don't have enough oxygen in my legs to walk normally and that my muscles contract faster than most people. So things like walking and lifting weights and going swimming and eating healthy and all those things, they increase importance for me because of my disability. And when you look at organizations and the correlation to why hiring people with disabilities is important because as a speaker, you know this fact. When you pitch yourself to organizations, you know this fact. When you pitch yourself to organizations, they want to know how can your talk bring more value to my organization? What pain points are you solving?
Speaker 1:And when I talk to businesses about hiring for disabilities, I always make the argument that people with disabilities or those that have acceptionalities are great problem solvers because they have to solve problems every day. I told you at the beginning of this that one of my mottos in life is that everyone's portrait of success is different. I also say that it may not always be graceful or in terms of the aesthetic, on how it looks from a corporate standpoint, but as long as it's effective. That's the main goal. So when we talk about the correlation to fitness and how it relates to the corporate world hiring folks with disabilities it's all about problem solving, coming up with solutions to problems, and that's one of the biggest ways you could solve them is by hiring folks with disabilities, because they're innate, natural problem solvers, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the athletic industry as a whole is changing quite a bit and I think that people are kind of grasping to find a place that that matters to them. It can help them. They can really help them do their particular needs and their wants. But also they want to be around like minded people. They want to be around those types of people that follow the same values as them, follow the same attributes as them really like back to. They want to find their community. And so when it comes to hiring people with disabilities, how would you feel that that would really be able to contribute to that particular audience?
Speaker 1:The fitness audience in particular.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I always say, when I work out with people, I always tell them that movement for me is medicine the more I move, the better I feel. And when it comes to hiring people with disabilities in the fitness space, you know it's all about people with disabilities like routine, just like the rest of us, and fitness is structure and it provides people with disabilities structure. So hiring them to work at a gym, for example, and you ask the receptionist jobs, oftentimes those jobs have a pattern or a procedure to follow and, and you know, business and fitness is all about operation and procedures. So hiring people with disabilities, particularly in the fitness space, would also allow you to improve their systems and processes. Oh, systems and processes, I love improve your systems and processes.
Speaker 2:Oh, systems and processes. I love talking about systems and processes.
Speaker 1:I know you do that, but I got it out.
Speaker 2:Why don't you talk a little bit? Can you dive into a little bit more about that so people can kind of get a better understanding of how? Because you're right, I think that you do have different types of positions there. When people think about, hey, I have a facility, they're usually like, hey, there's, there's me, there's the manager, and then we have five trainers, 10 trainers, 20 trainers. They don't think about the other positions that um are client facing or membership facing, and so, um, I'd love to hear a little bit more about that. Could you elaborate and go deeper into that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I'll use this example. So if all gyms have some sort of a membership engagement person or department, if you hire someone with a disability and say I work at this gym, I support people with disabilities and you should really consider joining this gym because it's a collaborative and inclusive environment. And you know studies as act that 92% of consumers support businesses that hire people with disabilities. So if you hire someone in the membership engagement space, for example, and you get them in a front-facing position within an organization, that's a new vehicle or avenue to facilitate new relationships, open up clientele and expand business because you're bringing people from all walks of life into your facility to make sure that the people that are part of that gym are inclusive. And the other thing I would say is that it's important to put people with disabilities in leadership positions because it allows you to sort of elevate your blind spots in terms of fixing them or addressing them as an organization.
Speaker 2:So it's about finding positions of leadership within the fitness or health and fitness space or any corporate space in general, because you know it opens up the amount of people who the more you go deeper, the more I want to go deeper, right, because I think that you know, I think leadership is a huge, huge topic, that we could even go on a deeper rabbit hole here, because I think that you hear it all the time Corporate, you know you have a structure, you have leadership that is the head of you know the managers and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Leadership that is the head of you know the managers and stuff like that. But usually when it comes down to a studio, when you get closer to those small to medium facilities unless you're a franchise you're kind of hitting a point where leadership is kind of getting dismissed and there isn't much leadership within the ecosystem which needs to change, right, I think that it definitely needs to change and I think, with what you're kind of bringing up here, you could have a twofold perspective, right. You could start hiring leadership roles within the space itself and allowing further people with disabilities to be able to make a difference within the studio environment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the thing that I would add to that is, particularly in the fitness space, it's important to put the first voices and people with lived experience in front-facing roles. So, for example, I'll use one of the gyms by my house, for example it's called Good Life Fitness and they've got a form to fill out to specifically hire folks with disabilities to work receptionist roles, for example, because that's the first person you see when you go into a gym. So if people know that you work at a gym at a front-facing level, they're more apt to hire or go to that gym because they want to support that business and their commitment to inclusion. So it's important to also put them in front-face table roles, even if you're a smaller organization, because it can expand your business, because again they're bringing in new clientele and they're also telling the public. We're willing to contribute to the solution of, you know, opening up the doors of possibility for folks that are visually not prominently featured in the workplace as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's wonderful and I liked how you use the example of an actual gym, an actual studio. They're more of a, you know, a franchise, more than they are a boutique studio, but I think the concepts are still the same. I mean, when I look at a franchise, really, they just kind of done all the things that I do and systematized it and then was able to replicate that across the board, and then they just have higher ups that look over all that. But I think that what you're saying with lifetime right there shows that me as an individual would feel more, more aligned with the values that they're bringing in, knowing that they're also trying to not be judgmental, for example, and allowing people to come in and work behind the desk, let alone the efficiencies that you were talking about.
Speaker 1:I would just simply push back on the word judgmental and I would simply replace it with you know the first thinker, because you know businesses and business owners. Whether it's a franchise or a fitness operation, they're always looking for efficiency. And if you see, a lot of business owners don't know, unless you work in the inclusive employment space, that there are agencies that help train people with disabilities on how to work, agencies that help train people with disabilities on how to work, and most of them have job coaches that can come in and help the person if they need assistance in setting up procedure. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:I gave a presentation last year to a group that is in charge of finding work for people with disabilities and the job developer gave the example of McDonald's. Because they got this particular person a job storing the freezer and sort of itemizing where the needs at everything in the freezer and they were having trouble with labels and remembering things. So what the job coach did was they bought like labels and they put in, where appropriate, the labels of the meat and they taught the system on how to sort particular meats and then that particular person a year later won employee of the year at McDonald's. All because of that simple process and procedure that the job goes put into place. So it's all about making systems and processes more efficient and effective. The most effective way you can do that, in my view anyway, is to have a diverse workforce.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, have a diverse workforce, but still try to keep a similar culture right. I think that's the challenge.
Speaker 1:Culture equals commitment, Zach. You have to make the commitment to form a culture, my friend.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, that's exactly right. I recently did a talk for a company and helped them understand the importance of building values around their organization and really building how that dictates around their organization and really building how that dictates it's really a dictation of behavior right, and having an understanding of the types of behaviors that you're trying to represent and or the types of behaviors that the people you're trying to bring on is because, as you know, it doesn't matter who you are. That hiring in general is hard, finding your audience is hard, and being able to find a way to be like, hey, can I have any leg up here and understand that even if you try to hire the best people and you have the best onboarding processes, you're still going to be put in a place where you could make a wrong decision. It just happens right. And so trying to find ways to do that behavior and I think that behavior will also help point that commitment.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I always say that. You know in life, my friend, that we set our own expectations. And what I mean by that in a corporate space is that if you make the commitment to infusing the culture, then you'll reap the reward to the investment. So it's about making that commitment, meaning if you want to ensure that you're also getting a return on that investment. But the only way you could get the return on an investment is if you make a commitment to the culture. So absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really do appreciate you jumping on, kevin. I think that this was a great cast. You know I'd love to have you on again in the near future. Let's, as we start to wind down for this cast, why don't we dive into a little bit more on anything else you'd like to tell the audience?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would simply say, is that you know, one of the cornerstones of my life is that inclusion is the gateway to independence, and for anyone listening to this, who may work at a gym or in a corporate space, you hold the key to possibilities for exploration, for opportunity for people that look and sound like me. Obviously, folks with disabilities are severely underemployed, and the way that we can change that is by making a commitment to infusing them as a part of the company culture, and I hope that I've done justice to delivering that point this afternoon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you definitely have and I definitely appreciate you being on. If anyone wants to reach out to you, where can they find you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so all of my information is on kevinmisschanspreepscom and if you want to check out my podcast, it's called let's have this Conversation. It's on YouTube. Just type in let's have this Conversation and my name, kevin McCann, and myself, will come up and all of my socials are there, so that's the best way they can find me. There's that.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. Well again, kevin, I appreciate you being on For everyone out there today. Look out in the show notes or the description. If you'd like to learn more about Kevin, reach out to him. This is another episode of the Fit to Grit cast. I'm your host, zach Coleman, and enjoy your visionary time.
