BBC 2008 wrapped up officially not on the night we unveiled our official grand prize winner but rather last week when all three businesses re-convened to wrap up our thoughts on BBC1 and decide on a BBC2.
This was some weeks after we held a post boot camp de-brief session with all five of our campers. The purpose of the de-brief was two fold, to get our campers valuable no-holds barred feedback on their entire experience and to aid us in planning for a BBC 2009. What we learned that night was truly valuable and will absolutely assist us in streamlining our structures for BBC2.
The purpose of this writing is to reflect on our original intention to prove that when one commits to a professional program transformation will result. Our five beauty boot camp candidates showcased the collaborative work of our three companies: Institut’ DERMed, Nolands Suttles Salon and The Gym Of Buckhead. Our mission in creating beauty boot camp was to find five individuals that were ready for commitment and transformation. We screened 201 potential candidates using a process of fitness, skin and hair analysis and an intake questionnaire to qualify each candidate’s readiness to commit to the program. Then we set an 8 week deadline to prove our companies could deliver real results within that short time-frame. Today there can be no doubt that the collaboration is successful. The documentation captured in the form of before and after photos and written testimonies tells the story.
Now to the overall concept of BBC: "Your passport to a new you". From our campers perspective they committed to a life changing experience. Did we change their lives? That's debatable. We changed their skin, we changed their hair, we changed their weight and their fitness level, we gave ourselves kudos for accomplishing our goals, but the underlying theme of the de-brief session was that without "us" they were now having difficulty carrying on with the foundations we had so earnestly put in place for them during the Beauty Boot Camp program. At de-brief our question to the group was simple, "where are you at now"? Of the five, some were managing to some degree to carry on with their regimen, others were not.
Why? All had their reasons for this, many of which were directed at us for not having a post program for them to carry on with. Our feelings initially were that we do have all the same programs we started out with, which they were of course welcome to take advantage of, it just wasn’t completely spelled out for them in a post program guide, nor was it obligatory to attend the gym, eat nutritious, or do home maintenance on their skin as BBC had been.
In the ensuing conversation we discovered that the post BBC blues had set in. Working out alone, or even at the gym, wasn't going to cut it when people had gotten used to personal training, if their skin was starting to revert back to prior conditions that was due to the lack of services...........not a lack of determination to continue with a home maintenance regimen, if hair was starting to get a little rough around the edges, hey what do you expect now that we don't have a personal stylist. That these were reasons 'not' to work out at all, or maintain skin or hair at all, would seem to indicate that the issue is actually one of personal perspective. Our campers had been given the foundation but without a provided post program for them to follow they weren’t taking the initiative to build on the foundation either together as a group, or individually.
Having assessed their feedback we realized additional structures must be put in place for the Beauty Boot Campers of 2009. The attitudes and perspectives that people brought with them into BBC, their view of life, their reasons for how they ended up where they did on a personal level, their vow to change all that, didn't really appear to us from our debrief session to have changed. All of our campers came to us seeking help for the exterior issues they found themselves dealing with but the interior thought processes, feelings and perspective towards their lives seemed to a great degree to have remained intact. Now don't get us wrong, from their own feedback it would seem that there were immense roadblocks overcome for most of them, primarily the fact that they now recognized the roadblocks. But what we discovered was that while we have all the tools necessary to create personal transformation, or as one camper put it "a Hollywood celebrity".........it will be temporary unless life style coaching is added to the program.
In essence it’s not enough to have 'proven solutions' that work only on the 'external you', but we also need to add 'proven solutions' for the 'internal you'. As we plan for BBC2 in 2009 that's the missing piece of the pie that we hope to add. Changing lives by changing hair, skin and fitness remains our vision and mission, and while that goes a long way, the rest of the journey would not be complete without a guide to 'changing lives by changing attitudes'.
Additionally, setting the expectations, creating and sharing the lifestyle plan, complete and timely communication, and adding a member mentor during and post program will be value added benefits for our 2009 candidates. In closing, we must emphasize that without our very brave 2008 campers, who were so willing to offer themselves up honestly and openly about all of their personal experiences and observations none of this would be possible. It would have been so easy for our 5 unique women to not care about the program once it was over and there was no longer anything in it for them. Instead all of them were very willing to assist us in improving on the program, and were encouraging us to continue on with this amazing platform to showcase our work and in so doing help our candidates become the best that they can be.
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