In August we posted a clip of one of our spinners in the training room going for a trick he hadn't landed yet. He didn't land it. He ate the mat, hard, sign first, in front of the whole crew. It's still one of the most-watched things we've put on Instagram, and the comments were split between people laughing and people asking a fair question: wait, you train for this?
Yes. That's the whole point of this post. By the time a Spinja™ shows up on your corner, the trick works. Here's what happens before that.
The room
Every market has one. Mats on the floor, a rack of retired arrows along the wall, and a lot of space overhead, because most of the tricks involve a four-foot sign leaving somebody's hands. New hires spend their first sessions here before they ever see a client's corner. Nobody learns on the job in front of your customers.
The first thing everyone learns is the Bat Wing. It's the easy one, the trick every Spinja™ can do, and it still turns heads at 40 mph. From there the ladder goes up: the Smithy, where the sign never stops moving and never leaves the hands; the Jackie Chan, which is exactly as advanced as it sounds; the helicopters, the freezes, the combinations. Every trick has a name because every trick has a standard, and a standard is something you can fail.
The freeze is the hard part
People assume the flip is the difficult bit. It isn't. Throwing a sign in the air is easy. Catching it clean, planting your feet, and holding the arrow dead still and readable for a full second while a car goes by, that's the freeze, and that's what separates a spinner from a Spinja™. A trick that ends with the message facing the wrong way is a trick the driver never read.
That's why the training room isn't only about the spectacular stuff. Most of the hours go into sign control, which is a boring phrase for a very specific skill: keeping the client's name legible to a moving car no matter what the sign is doing. The clip of the guy eating the mat is what learning that looks like in week two.
Every quarter, the crew competes
Four times a year, in each market, the spinners go head to head. It's not a stunt for the camera. It's scored, on tricks, sign control and stamina, because a great two-minute routine means nothing if the same person is dragging by hour four of a Saturday shift. The winners get bragging rights and the first pick of shifts. Everyone else gets a very clear picture of what the standard is now.
That competition is how every market stays the same company. A client in Naples and a client in Seattle should get the same Spinja™ on the corner: same energy, same sign control, same professionalism when someone rolls down a window to ask a question. The only way to make that true is to measure it, regularly, in front of everyone.
Why the business hiring the corner should care
- The person on your corner earned the spot. Nobody gets sent to a client's road until the tricks land and the sign stays readable.
- The show is consistent. Hour one and hour five look the same, because stamina is scored, not assumed.
- Your message survives the trick. Every routine ends in a freeze with the arrow facing traffic. The performance is there to earn the glance; the freeze is there to spend it on your name.
- It's the difference you're paying for. Anyone can hold a sign. You're hiring the training room.
And yes, he landed it the following week. We'll post that one too.
The Spinjas train and staff crews in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa Bay, Orlando, Fort Myers & Naples, Los Angeles and Seattle. Think you could make it through the training room? We're hiring in every market.
Request a free quote or call 1-855-SPIN-NOW (1-855-774-6669). Put a trained Spinja™ on your corner.
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