How-to Open a Fitness Studio A-Z
Are you a personal trainer or a fitness professional with a dream of one day opening your own gym or studio?
Well I remember being there, but fast forward many years and I bought, built, and sold five studios of my own.
I’ve had partnerships, solo ventures, I’ve used financing, I’ve self financed.
And I have helped dozens of other trainers on four different continents open their first, next, 5th or 10th locations.
So I’ve been building this kind of A-Z series on the steps to take and how to layout your plan successfully, really helping people acknowledge some of the key areas that are generally skipped or misunderstood in this process.
Heck I remember when I first got this crazy notion.
I remember the look of the real estate agent showing me the 15,000 square foot building and he plans I had for the grand temple of iron!
Little did I know my savings of $27,000 was not going to finance the million dollar project!
I remember being deflated when next we looked at the beat up 2000 square foot dance studio, and because it was the only option we could afford felt we had to proceed.
Little did I know at the time the bullet I dodged.
We went on to build a business that would do more than $1,000,000 in personal training revenue in it’s first 18 months of operation (this from a trainer who previously struggled to generate $50-70k annually on my own.)
I sold that business three years ago, but it’s still operating today, nearly 14 years after it began with the humble beginnings of that beat up dance studio filled with hopes and dreams.
If that sounds at all like you, I hope these videos help you do it faster than I did, and skip so many mistakes that cost me tens of thousands of dollars!
Part 1: Visualizing Your Dream and Finding and Validating A Good Location
Part 2: Projecting Your Operating Costs, Setting Pricing, and How-to Plan to Be Profitable On Day 1
Part 3: Renovation Costs, Total Opening Costs, Financing, and Negotiating Your Lease
If you found any of this helpful I hope you’ll subscribe! (Just click here to subscribe www.youtube.com/mrfitnessmarketing)
How Do I Calculate My Fitness Marketing ROI?
Am I spending too much on Facebook? Should I be spending more on Facebook?
What else should I be spending marketing dollars on?
Is print/radio/flyers/direct mail/this, that or that other thing worth it?
How do I know if any of this is working?
I’m sure all of these and many more questions are going through your head all the time. (And if they’re not then clearly you’re in denial and just avoiding it altogether which means you need to understand this even more.)
You’re working hard to grow a personal training business that works, you can’t afford to keep throwing money away on things that don’t work.
Worse, it’s getting harder all the time with all the extra competition.
Things that worked last month are now twice as expensive and working half as well.
Ahhhhhh….what do I do?
Well as we all know by now, we need to make decisions objectively, this is certainly maybe even more true when it comes to business.
You need to be able to evaluate your fitness marketing objectively, be able to quantify the results.
And here’s the great news, not only will I teach you to do that, when you do the decisions become super easy and clear.
In fact you’ll stop looking at your fitness marketing efforts as a stressful expense and see them as a lucrative and scalable investment!
Check out this short video, it will teach you all you need to know about calculating your fitness marketing ROI (and likely give you a few new things to think about too!)
If you like it I hope you’ll subscribe! (Just click here to subscribe www.youtube.com/mrfitnessmarketing)
Fitness Studio KPIs | 7 Numbers to Rule Them All!
Lord of the Rings Fan? Ok I am, but it just so happens much like the 7 Rings of Power there are also 7 Fitness Studio KPIs that have proven to be very impactful in running and managing a fitness business.
Don’t know what a KPI is? Don’t worry you’re not alone, it’s weird that a group such as trainers who are all about progression and measurement have been shamefully kept in the dark about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) when it comes to business.
Much like you know with your clients, measurement is key when it comes to your clients, measurement shows progress, but more importantly still it creates dialogue, trust and collaboration between you and your client.
The numbers form an objective point of measurement so you can work together to reaching the desired outcome.
The same is true for your team, your fitness studio KPIs in many respects will decide the outcome of your business.
But here’s the best part, all you need is a simple whiteboard, 5 minutes per week and the willingness to learn something new and this can begin having a positive impact on your business in as little as the next seven days.
That’s no exaggeration, this short video will lay out the whole process.
It will teach you the 7 numbers, the 7 fitness studio KPIs, why they are important, how to find them, what to do with them, and how to get your team involved with them.
This is one of those blog posts that I hope everyone will somehow find and absorb because I just know the impact it can have.
If you like it I hope you’ll subscribe! (Just click here to subscribe www.youtube.com/mrfitnessmarketing)
Content Has and Always Will Be King
You know it’s been more than 20 years now that I have been “self-employed.”
A lot has changed, for instance when I first started there was no Facebook or Twitter, in fact it was amazing if as a small company or solopreneur you had any kind of a functional website.
I had no idea what I was doing, so I did like everyone else, I put up posters in the gym, I printed brochures and business cards.
And I had no customers, in fact over the first few years I’d bounce between jobs trying to make ends meet in hopes that sometimes I could take up personal training full time.
I didn’t know anything about email marketing, I guess that existed back then but it wasn’t something I knew about.
But somehow, I still stumbled upon the importance of content.
Soon my brochures became articles that I’d leave at coffee shops, etc.
From there someone put it in my head to reach out to the paper and see if they’d give me a column, I did so relentlessly until they finally said yes.
That lead to a couple random contacts from people asking if I’d come present to small groups in their offices, which low and behold lead to customers.
From there I began to try to speak more, and over time my website became more and more cluttered with articles and resources I developed and posted for people.
Kind of by accident for a long time in my city of then 70,000+ people I was “the fitness guy” if you wanted to get in shape or learn how to you sought me out.
As time has went on this hasn’t changed, except that it’s easier to reach more people faster and harder to keep up.
In fact it’s almost too easy to reach people now, so easy that we are inundated with more content than ever before.
And there are more places to post and deliver your message than ever before (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Email, Website, etc.)
Just thinking about it is exhausting and a daunting task, and I’ll be the first to admit I find it easy to burn out.
And with that has come some hard lessons.
Content truly is king, when you lose your focus, burnout or become inconsistent with your content your business will suffer, whether that’s a little or a lot only you will know but it happens…without fail.
Truly that should be obvious, I mean there’s just so much now, so many businesses, services like yours, people doing basically what you’re doing.
It becomes harder and harder to differentiate yourself except that only you can be you, and people want to buy “you,” I want to buy you.
What you have to say is important, what you have to give is golden.
Only first, define who is the ideal person for your message. Know their age, what they like, the clothes they wear, the places the hang out, the things they like to do, the products they buy and more.
Craft an image of that person that you can “speak to” every time you step in front of a camera, add text to a page or through whatever means of deliver.
My challenge to you is from today forward try to post something every single day, but don’t get spread to thin trying to service all the mediums.
Focus on your blog (which also goes to your email list), your Instagram account (which also goes to your Facebook page) and if you have a private group for your clients that rounds out the third.
If you can commit to this every day, even 2 posts a week in each of those places (take Sunday’s off or give one channel bonus attention) in time will have a significant impact.
Total truth, I find generating new content very tough to do each day, and I prefer to write which seems to take the most time for me, but what I see from my mentors is like anything else this is a muscle, work it out and it will get stronger.
In time try to increase your frequency to each channel once per day, I can do it, you can do it.
Here’s some tips and tools I use to help you get started:
- Spend 30 minutes brainstorming topics you could talk about confidently with no preparation for 10 minutes. Set a goal for 10, trust me you will easily come up with 20. Use this list each day you’re stuck for an idea what to write on/talk about, even using the same ideas over you’ll share new things.
- A great little app I’ve found I like for generating Memes for blog post images and social media posts is called “Typorama.”
- For Instagram I always use the “Hashtagger” app for my hashtags posted in the first comment and have had good success with this.
Finally remember, and this is the tough one for me, your content doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be you, authentic and come from the heart. If you really find yourself stuck for a day, take the day off instead take those 30 minutes to go read your current professional development read I find this helps me get back to creativity sooner.
Oh and maybe one last weird suggestion that truly does help me, I’ve fallen in love with a supplement from Perfect Sports called Onset, a blend of Agmatine Sulfate and NAC etc that helps with focus, I find it has a tremendous impact for me when it comes to creative tasks.
Road Map to Your Income Statement
Do you find your financial numbers confusing? Are you afraid to or not sure what you should be looking for?
Your income or profit and loss statement and your balance sheet are key roadmaps into how well you’re business is doing, what is and isn’t working, and even how you’re likely going to do going forward.
I don’t know about you but even having went to school for business I still found deciphering my business financial statements to be confusing, in fact for the longest time I never looked at them.
And for most of that time I still continued to struggle.
I’m guessing if that was true for me it might be true for many of you.
I’m truly committed to help you grow a bigger, better, more profitable business and in turn allow you to help even more people. (Once a trainer, always a trainer, I truly believe together we can change the world.)
So it would be a tall task I think to fully break this down in one short article (and likely rather dull, long, boring and confusing.)
So today I just wanted to get you aware of and thinking about some key areas of you Profit & Loss/Income statement.
First, if you’ve never even seen one of these that’s the first problem we should deal with.
If you have a shoebox full of receipts and statements you deliver to your account 1-2 times a year, you’re really shooting yourself in the foot.
I can’t urge you enough to make sure you have a bookkeeper you work with on a monthly basis, make sure they’re doing a bank reconciliation (I think it would be rare to find one these days that doesn’t but you might as well get familiar with the term.)
Essentially this means they’re going through your bank statement and identifying, recording and classifying every transaction; so you’re left with information that follows your actual bank account.
I say follows because what you see in your account will NOT correlate to your statements on any given day, cashflow and what has already processed are very different things.
But let’s focus on some key information in your profit & loss/income statement that can help you right away today.
First the obvious stuff.
The big numbers at the top, the good stuff AKA revenue.
In addition to the obvious of how many dollars/month your business is currently generating you may wish to look at this in a couple of different ways.
- Do you have multiple services or products? If so you might want to look at each in terms of what percentage of revenue does it account for? Let me give you an example, if 80% of your revenue comes from your group program, and only 20% comes from your one-on-one training program, which one would you most likely want to spend most of your marketing dollars on?
- Another way you may want to consider your revenue is to divide it by the total square feet of your business effectively giving you revenue per square foot. This can be useful in understanding the pricing of your service, or as you get fuller what opportunities may exist and even how it evolves and changes through quarter after quarter based on heavy promotion etc.
Those pesky expenses.
Of course inverse to revenue is all the costs to run the business, and more importantly what’s left AKA profit or income (we hope there’s something left anyways.)
Either way revenue minus expenses gives us a dollar amount for profit and loss, divide this number by the total revenue and now have our gross profit margin (gross because we haven’t considered taxes, but we’ll leave that out of the discussion today.)
These few numbers alone can be very helpful in understanding how healthy your business is or how it’s performing, but let me give you a couple more specific things I always teach my entrepreneurs that I think can have a really big impact in your decision making.
The first is: percentage of revenue attributed to payroll.
Within your expense categories you should find entries for payroll/wages, possibly subcontract expenses, and if your provide benefits for your employees at shared cost don’t forget to add that in as well as what you pay yourself.
The later can be a bit confusing as for tax purposes you may pay yourself primarily via dividend which will not show on your income statement, this is recorded on your balance sheet.
For our review purposes it’s still important to add it in because we need to think of our company as a living breathing entity that must support itself, and of course you need to know that the resources you’re using to support yourself can continue.
Once you have a total of expenses related to paying others (and yourself) divide this total amount by total revenue, this gives you percentage of revenue attributed to payroll.
What’s yours?
Is it over 40%? If so I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, if you’re presently struggling, you’ve found one of your biggest problems, the bad news is I can tell you from seeing hundreds of fitness businesses that this isn’t going to be sustainable long term with much hope for real profitability. We’ve got to get revenue up, or payroll down if this is where you’re at.
35-40% This is a common area to find yourself if your business is new or within a heavy period of growth and expansion.
25-35% This is the sweet spot operating zone, at 25% congratulations, you are part of the 1% of very efficient fitness businesses, at 30% you are doing great and should work to maintain this long term, at 30-35% you’re doing great, you’re healthy and can continue to strive to find new opportunity!
This metric can be really beneficial when it comes to hiring, and deciding what you might be able to afford a specific employee(s) or even how you need to set certain goals for new positions in an effort to ensure payroll that may initially increase, over time, ends back up in target ranges.
Ex. Let’s say your payroll is at 30% and is a total of $10,000. This tells us total revenue is a little over $30,000. For easy numbers we could speculate that if payroll was at $11,500 we’d now be at about 35% of total revenue; still within our ideal operating parameters. So this gives you budget of about $1500/month to expand your team.
Can you spend more? Sure but now you can be aware that long term that may create additional stress if that hire doesn’t quickly impact your total revenue in a positive way.
Make sense?
I’ll leave you with one more.
Marketing or advertising dollars.
If you divide the total for marketing and advertising against total revenue now we get a percentage of revenue spent on marketing.
I can tell you that my recommendation to all of my clients is to work to grow comfortable with spending at least 8% of total revenue on marketing and most of my most successful clients spend much more.
You can also quickly evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing and begin to understand the implications of different seasons (like January vs July.)
If you divide your total marketing spend by your total number of new leads for that month we have a basic idea of cost/lead.
You can do the same thing with total new sales for the month, total marketing divided by new sales gives you cost/customer.
Now in theory we can calculate what we need to spend to reach certain growth targets, we can also measure the effectiveness of present and future campaigns by comparing current cost per lead and cost per customer to the previous quarter, promotion, month or benchmark.
Do you see how all of this can really help you make much clearer and better decisions regarding what to do next to achieve your next goal or milestone in your business?
If you’re going to win this game you cannot avoid or be afraid of your financials.
P.S. If you’ve watched my 4 Pillars of a Successful Fitness Business video then what you’ve just learned is most of the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for Pillar #4.
I’d sure love to help you with your business and can teach you the basic KPIs we use in the other areas to help your whole team become better aligned behind your goal and on the path to bigger growth!
If you ever want to know if coaching with me could be a good fit for you please reach out via a reply, direct message or the contact form on my website at www.cabelmceldery.com
How-to Get People to Do What You Want, Make More Money, and Get Laid More!
Some time ago I came up with this acronym for EAS, which always stuck with me because growing up I was such a big Bill Phillips/Body For Life fan.
A few years ago I was hugely honoured with a special invitation to speak at the local TEDx event, this was a big deal for me I really wanted to do something impactful, in fact it’s the first speech I kind of wrote and the only one I’ve practiced to memory since college.
If you haven’t watched this video I really do suggest you spend the 18 minutes: https://youtu.be/3O1yYuOBFrE
You see EAS began as sales training and because of TEDx became the simple equation to harness the power of inspiration no matter who you are or what situation you’re in.
Why should that be important to you?
Because this is what I think is amazing about the world today.
Bad news.
Like it or not, you are always selling and selling to everyone.
If you weren’t always selling…
You wouldn’t have any friends…
No one (your kids) wouldn’t listen to you…
You wouldn’t have a job/career/business/etc…
You’d have never gotten laid (yep I just said that)…
You’ll never get “upgraded” on an airline or in Vegas…
Your clients wouldn’t be getting results…
I think you get the point.
Good news.
Selling used to be that the salesperson knew more than the prospect about a product or service and they would leverage that information to convince (or coerce) a prospect into making a decision.
Hence we all have this gut response to dislike salesman or associate sales as being a bad thing or something to be avoided.
But that’s not how it is now.
The internet, the Facebooks, the YouTubes and all those kinds of things have placed all the information that we can handle (and more) at our finger tips.
As consumers we are equally or often more educated about a product or service than the salesperson whose job it is to sell it to us.
And this is great news (and where EAS comes in.)
Selling can now be honest, transparent, sincere (or at least that’s my belief and what I teach when it comes to selling.)
Your job as the salesperson now is to help people to take action on what they really want, to help them realize why continuing to procrastinate is hurting them, or they are the only ones losing out.
Your job is to be supportive, kind, caring and sincere and by doing so we give people the confidence to be decisive, to take action and make a change in their life.
Now that’s what I call sales! I love that I can be supportive, kind, and enthusiastic and give someone else a lift, almost no convincing necessary!
But…remember this is still sales (not to be confused with a conversation) all this goodness only happens when people make a consensual decision (like the conjugal situation I mentioned above) so you better hone your skills when it comes to participating in that decision process.
And that’s where EAS comes in.
Emotion.
No one makes a decision without being emotionally invested.
What would it feel like to wear that bikini with total confidence?
The conversation always begins with emotional questions, things that lead to a description.
Affirmation.
You’re the assistant, you need permission to proceed.
Does this make sense?
Do you understand?
Can I show you the different options?
Can I be sure you will follow your meal plan to the letter this week?
Yes or no questions. (If you get a no you have to back up, they are not emotional enough to be ready to make a decision, or at least not the one you want.)
Solution.
Only when you have their total consent, affirmation and permission does the solution, your product, service or offer even matter.
If you haven’t navigated the first two steps before getting here it’s going to be a negative outcome nearly every single time!
But don’t take my word for it, think back to previous situations, watch my video, put it to the test at work, at home, with friends and with your kids.
Anyways I hope that helps.
Here’s a great 4-minute video as a follow up that talks about how this same process works with a group of people https://youtu.be/nL5zujknLkM
Reverse Engineering
Below is a weekly email I sent to my team to explain the idea of reverse engineering any goal, I thought you might find value in it’s application personally or even to your team so I thought I’d repost for you here!
Enjoy!
Do you use reverse engineering in your life?
If not you should, and it’s a great concept to understand and be able to teach friends, family and especially our clients.
Reverse engineering is just as Stephen Covey (author of the 7 Habits books) would put it, “beginning with the end in mind.”
Most commonly people might think of this in terms of money or finances, and certainly in my crazy entrepreneurial world it’s a way I use reverse engineering frequently; but it’s so much more than that.
It can and should be used for any goal.
Why?
Simple, what’s the only thing that stops us from reaching any goal? (Finances, fitness, personal, any goal.)
FEAR.
Yup that’s it. We can be too intimidated to start, too stressed out about the work or how hard it will be, or fearful because we fail one or more times along the way (or have previously failed in our attempts to reach the goal.)
Reverse engineering helps absolve fear by shoring up another thing I’m a big fan of talking about with you and hour clients; and that’s confidence.
You know what I’m talking about, that when the step or next task is so small or easy that we’re not afraid motivation or action comes easy because well it appears easy.
Now what feels easy to you may not to me and vice versa, which is where reverse engineering comes in.
Step 1: What’s the big outcome you want? (ex. Buy a new car/lose 30 lbs)
Step 2: What time frame do you want this to happen in? (ex. 6 months/12 weeks)
Step 3: Break down to next increment. (ex. each month I need to earn an additional $500/each week I need to lose 2.5lbs)
Step 4: Break it down to next smaller increment until it feels easy.
Ex.
I need to earn and additional $125/week, I work an average of 30 hours so I’d need to earn about $4.25 an hour more or increase my working hours by 5-8 / I need to lose only 0.35lbs/day)
Does it feel small enough to you yet, if not break it down further or begin creating a plan.
Ex.
Earnings
Could I talk to my teammates and offer to take some extra shifts?
Do I have a skill or hobby that I’m good at and could pick up a freelance project on the side?
What could I do to add enough value to increase my earnings by an additional $4.25 an hour?
Every testimonial/before and after we publish helps increase our reputation, every new Google/Facebook review we get helps someone on the fence make a decision, every new person that has a great workout has a chance to sign up, every new person you get to come workout the first time has a 50/50 chance of deciding to stay.
Every person you talk to about staying longer has a better than 50% chance of deciding to stay. Have a look at the “Levels in your job description” for ideas on how you can quickly achieve this. Could I speak to 3 people per day about continuing and basically “1-2” memberships per week? Or find 1-2 new people per week to try a workout by asking daily on my personal social media? Does that seem easy and sustainable?
(Now boys and girls, full transparency, I mention this because I want you to choose this one, as selfishly it’s the one that can help me the most, but there’s also a bigger reason. This is the one where if we all work together the results/potential are limitless so selfishly it should appeal to you too!)
Could I learn about something new and start building a passive or additional income?
Last year I became curious about Amazon, in September I sold $184 on Amazon all things I bought in clearance bins with less than $100 of starting capital, in October that was $1994 with a profit of $330, last month we sold nearly $40,000 on Amazon! Now I wish I could say you could grow like that with $100 to invest but that isn’t true. But my point is that anyone could easily generate $300-500/month on Amazon with 5-10 hours/month worth of effort and I will even teach you how.)
Could you dedicate 1 hour/day Monday-Friday to learn about how to sell on Amazon and another 3-4 hours/week to go and shop for things to sell? Does that seem easy and sustainable?
Fitness
0.35lbs of fat = 1430 calories of energy.
30 minutes of boot camp = approx. 400 calories
Reducing daily calorie consumption by 10% = approx. 180 calories
Adding 30 minutes of slow distance cardio = approx. 200 calories
Reducing starchy carbohydrates and replacing with fibrous to increase energy utilization during digestion = approx. 150 calories
To me this is about the maximum that seems “easy” and might be overwhelming already for many, so we must re-evaluate the goal, if it took 16-18 weeks to lose 30lbs would you still be satisfied? Does the above seem simple? Only works if you can answer yes to both!
Anyways, that’s my attempt to teach you the power of reverse engineering, it can work for anything like: setting dedicated working hours or working less, like improving your relationships with others, like accomplishing any big milestone in your financial life, and even spirituality or emotional growth.
Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help!
The 3C’s of Chaos Management
We all know by now if you’re going to own your own business and be an entrepreneur chaos is nothing new.
In fact we must always work to embrace the chaos as the only time to worry is when chaos is enveloped by calm.
When all is “calm” that’s a clear indication you’re not pushing, reaching, stretching or evolving fast enough as a company or team and will be the time you’re entrepreneurship is at real risk.
So this week’s topic is “Chaos Management.”
How do we handle and embrace chaos so that we don’t become overly stressed or burnt out?
Let me share with you the concept of the 3C’s of Chaos Management.
If you’re striving and pushing as hard as you can life will always be chaotic.
Chaos attempts to break us, burn us out, or leave us paralyzed due to stress, this is the paradox of achievement.
In order to reach a new level of success or achievement we must face and avoid, or overcome burnout, mitigate stress, and still find time for joy and happiness in the midst of continually urgent demands.
Now success can be many things: helping more people become the best versions of themselves, finding more time to do things you love, establish more and more meaningful relationships and so on.
No matter how you define success to reach a higher level of success we must increase our level of output or expenditure to that activity. Make sense? (ex. Even reducing stress requires greater output; just the output might be different such as allocating more time for meditation and reflection.)
So what are the 3C’s of Chaos Management?
First is Control.
With all the demands upon us inevitably some of that burden is within your “wheelhouse” the things that seem easier than the rest.
Usually we focus on these things first, they bother us less because we’re comfortable with what we’re facing, control is the easy part (but still make it a habit to deal with these items first because they increase confidence which will help with the remaining 2Cs.)
Next is Change.
What skills can you learn this week? How can you become more competent in what you already know? What things are you doing that you can do better at? What systems do we have that you see we could make more efficient? Is there a better way of doing something?
The real mark of embracing change is to take ownership and lead from the front; but as leaders we must really strive for our team to act in the same way.
We want them to feel comfortable and confident to vocalize ideas for improvements, ask for permission or take action to make improvements and then share their successes with their direct reports and team members.
Make it a safe place to fail and affirm that the only real failure is to fail to act or tray. (In our organization the only caveats being if there is a risk of someone getting hurt or a significant financial risk you must clear it with your direct report first.)
This is one of the purposes of the frequent reviews in an effort to increase collaboration and support change as a whole.
Finally is Cope with what you can’t Control or Change.
Like I said above the paradox of success is we must embrace the chaos that comes with stretching in any area but with that there will always be things that there’s nothing you can do about right now.
Do your best to embrace, accept and move on, not everything will work, it’s certainly not going to be easy, you will let people or yourself down from time to time.
In the end coping is a part of striving and it’s just a matter of asking yourself these two questions for all important affirmation:
- Did I/Have I done the best I possibly could?
- Has my positive impact/feedback outweighed that which I can’t control/negative feedback?
Remember without chaos you are at risk for extinction.
Don’t dread being busy, the unknown or the stress of responsibility for if you do you’re in dreadful danger of adding to the statistic of entrepreneurial failure!
You’ve got this!
P.S. The image in the meme above is one of my own taken on a trip to Iceland last February at an amazing place called “Diamond Beach” I highly recommend checking it out if you ever get a chance!
Managing and Leading a High Performance Team in 2018
The Dream Team!
It’s humbling to say the least; but leadership has not come naturally to me.
In fact it’s awkward to vocalize it (though a kind of therapy) I never realized I was such an introverted person.
I mean I guess maybe I should have clued in as I’ve always joked, “I like my dogs better than most people.”
But all jokes aside I think you get the point, leadership has been a challenge and as such my teams have seen many plateaus in my businesses that have been hard to get through and usually resulted in some turn over.
Now that’s not to say we don’t have great teams, or that we haven’t had great success, or even that we’ve had bad company culture. None of those things are true; but what is, is that it became clear to me that management and leadership needed to improve to position our companies for next level massive growth.
So today I wanted to share with you some of my biggest breakthroughs in building a team that’s going to let you add more digits to your revenue and profits.
Rule #1: You need more applicants.
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made repeatedly is we weren’t getting enough, reviewing enough, and interviewing enough applicants for an open position.
On average I now like to see at least 50 applicants for any position, whether that’s a trainer or an administrative role.
Many of you might be thinking; how do I even get that many applications quickly?
Well for me that’s come from three specific sources: mailing to my email list, spending money on paid posts on Facebook and paid job postings on sites like Indeed.ca/.com
All of our applicants now start their process with a group interview. That group interview begins with a workout after which they meet with my manager who asks the following questions: (If you’ve read the highly impactful book Double, Double by Cameron Herold you might recognize some of these, I you haven’t you should!)
- What are your favourite books and why?
- What is your favourite movie, and why?
- What car is most similar to you as a person, and why?
- What was the most stressful time of your life, and why?
- What was the most complex project/situation you ever led, and why?
- What stresses you out?
- Why do you want to work here?
- Who is the best candidate in the room, and why?
- If we were to hire two people, and you were one of them, who would you want us to hire to work with you?
- When could you start?
- *(Only ask this if there are not clients within ear shot, but great finishing question) How much do you need to earn per hour/annually in year one? Year three?
Our favourite time for group interviews is Friday at 5:30-7:00 PM (especially on long weekends.)
This process has saved us so much time and easily allows us to find the 3-5 top tier superstars out of the 50 applications we receive. These candidates then progress to a 90-minute second interview with me via Facebook messenger (great way to get them to add you as friends so you can see what their social feed looks like since people’s profiles are getting harder to find.)
This single adjustment completely reshaped my team in less than 60 days.
Rule #2: Foster communication, frequent communication.
I’ve been referring to it a lot lately, I guess because leadership and management has been on my mind so much.
I heard someone speak to a reference from Harvard Business School recently that went something like this, “as much as 86% of businesses that fail, fail because of poor communication, not a bad product or bad service.”
I have no idea if this is accurate but I’d be willing to bet that it is.
It’s a simple fact that any business that is actively trying to grow is going to be a bit disorganized, if you’re not you can’t be growing as fast as possible, that’s just the way it is.
When organization lacks; outcomes are dictated by the ability of the team members to make good decisions in that moment, let’s face it when chaos ensues we all default to perception and instinct and kind of make it up as we go.
Your goal is of course to ensure that the thought process that leads to those decisions is as much in line with your vision as possible. So how do you do that?
Well we’ve had massive success in just a short time using really regular employee reviews. (Weekly for the first 90 days, then monthly after that.)
(CLICK HERE to see a sample of one of our reviews)
I firmly believe in perception based questioning, so a lot of our review elements are based on 1-10 scale questions. Both the direct report and the employee will complete the review prior to the review meeting; the purpose is to clarify both performance, objectives and expectations and make sure they align with the company vision; but more importantly manufacture a frequent point of real communication so introverted people like me don’t keep putting it off.
Which leads me to rule #3…
Rule #3: Have a clear vision and values to live by.
I have to admit; over the years I’ve seen so many dusty mission and value statement signs in businesses that I began to brush their usefulness aside. Only recently I have truly begun to understand the significance and how to apply them.
What do you stand for?
Why is it important to you?
If you visualize your company in 3-5 years from today what will have happened?
I now believe this is so critical to success I urge you to stop reading and start writing right now!
Doing this kind of brainstorming activity recently lead me to shift the whole organizational structure of my companies, and the benefits it would bring became so obvious.
But describing your vision in as much detail as possible it will set your mind to begin to rationalize what does that end goal really look like?
From there you will begin to assign the concrete markers like how much revenue you will be generating, how much profit, how many employees you might need, how many customers, the impact you will have made with your product or service.
From there you can begin to work backward to where you are today, what do you need from each member of your team today to begin moving toward your vision? What are the bullet points of their day-to-day tasks? What more do you need to expect from them as you grow? Who are the new people you will need to your organization?
Soon you’ll end up as I did with a great list that will become the “job description” for each position in your organization and likely even a career roadmap for them to follow as they help you build the company illustrated in your vision.
(CLICK HERE to see our Mission, Vision, Values)
(CLICK HERE to see a sample of our Trainer Job Description and Career Path)
Trainer Job Description and Career Path
Trainer (25-33 hours/week Salary Range $31,000-65,000)
Direct Report: Manager
Position Overview: The Trainer works directly with the clients in a group setting to provide 30 minutes of high intensity circuit training. Our program is designed to be the best 30 minutes of our clients’ day, every day! In addition trainers will provide encouragement, resources, ensure safety, and coaching to a variety of fitness levels on and off the mat.
Expectations
On the Mic Standards (Expectations of the trainer while clients are present)
- Be the best 30 minutes of our clients day every day!
- Always exude high energy and run a highly energetic training session
- Greet, welcome and congratulate people (Preferably by name, expected to learn every single person’s name and use as often as possible.)
- Effectively demonstrate how to perform various exercises during a group session.
- Provide corrections as needed and use breaks to further educate clients on biomechanics and how to maximize the benefit of the workout.
- Always know who’s new, focus, protect and develop the new people.
- Monitor clients’ progress and continually challenge them to push beyond their current limits.
- Recognize veterans frequently (gold stars, make them station stars (have people look at what their doing as an example of good form)
- Develop relationships with all clients, knowing names and what their “why” is for attending bootcamp.
- Maintain safety at all times
- Wrap up with praise and acknowledgement
- Be willing to help people between camps in any way they need (Zen Planner, learning, form, nutrition, modification, etc)
- Understand and adhere to company core values, leading by example at all times.
Off the Mic Standards (Expectations of the trainer when clients are not present)
- Work with other trainers to design a variety of safe and effective workouts and submit on time. (Test the exercises, are they safe for deconditioned Mrs. Jones? Could a simpler/safer variation/alternative be just as effective?
- Reset the floor, make sure the workout floor is organized at all times.
- Tidy up (not just the workout floor, common areas too ex. Bathrooms, lounge, etc)
- Client follow up (relationships are everything the more we reach out the more compliance we get, the better the results are the more fun this is.)
- Client assistance (Zenplanner, etc, you need to know how to do just about anything in Zen.)
- Teardown, vacuum, and setup the new workout.
- Update/Review whiteboard KPIs weekly.
Required Education Training
- FBBC Certification
- 48hr Fat Loss training
- Nationally recognized certification
- Zen Planner (know all aspects of account management)
- Sonos/Spotify
- Skulpt
- Ongoing continuing education
- Martin Rooney
- Alwyn Cosgrove
- Anatomy
- Psycho cybernetics
- Extreme Ownership
- Delivering happiness
Points of Measurement:
- Attendance
- Total Number of Members
- Cancellation
- Before and Afters
- Spot checks (Video review of camps, or direct review by Manager/Director of Operations)
- Quarterly Review (Including scores from client satisfaction survey)
Qualifications/Requirements:
- Current nationally recognized training certification.
- Current CPR (First Aid is a bonus)
- Must be high energy, positive and outgoing all the time!
- (Preferred) A minimum of 2 years previous training experience is a huge asset.
- (Preferred) Minimum 2 years post secondary education in a related field.
Level 2 Trainers:
- Exemplify all standards as above
- Typically have 0-3 years of experience
- Maintain a strong safety record
- Workouts always submitted on time.
- Directly responsible for the regular submission (min 1-2/month/trainer ex. 2 trainers = average 2-4 submissions/month of before and after photos showing substantial change (20+lbs total lost)
- Receive strong quarterly feedback with 85% or more of client submissions at more than 8 on approval rate.
- Show regular initiative to award gold stars and take photos.
Level 3 Trainers:
- Maintain a strong safety record
- Directly responsible for the regular submission (min 1-2/month/trainer ex. 2 trainers = average 2-4 submissions/month of before and after photos showing substantial change (20+lbs total lost)
- Receive strong quarterly feedback with 85% or more of client submissions at more than 8 on approval rate.
- Post regularly on company social media.
- Can be attributed for client referrals on a semi-regular basis (at least 1/month)
- Is regularly responsible for submitted before and afters (they hand management or directly facilitate submissions for 2-4 before and afters/month)
- Nurture and foster our online reviews (home location receives 2-6 new reviews/month on places like Google and Facebook page.)
- Complete all suggested continuing education on time.
- Demonstrate a willingness to learn and dramatic improvement on related areas of work (ex. Zen Planner knowledge continual improvement.)
- Make a strong effort to know all client’s names.
- Always know who’s on a trial and facilitate continuation conversation with them.
- Become engaged in the community (ex. Member initiatives like grocery store tours, running events that bring new guests to us, getting involved in volunteer/fundraising initiatives.)
- Regularly responsible for new sales from new trial clients.
- Show signs of embracing continuing education by completing all suggested reading and new reading they’ve taken initiative to explore.
- Regularly involved in content generation (articles and videos on various topics)
- Constantly promoting the studio via personal social media.
- Is regularly responsible for submitted before and afters (they hand management or directly facilitate submissions for 4+ before and afters/month)
- Be entirely flexible of schedule and willing to fill in where needed.
Level 4 Trainers:
- Quarterly volunteer participation.
- Very active in continuing education (regular event attendance, exploring new certifications, influencing the teams education with what they’ve learned.)
- Is regularly responsible for submitted before and afters (they hand management or directly facilitate submissions for 6+ before and afters/month)
- Always exploring and implementing new exercises/burnouts/workout styles to keep things FUN and different for clients
- Workouts are completed and in the journal before they are due
- Gold stars handed out at least once per shift
- Be proactive in helping organize client events or new ideas for theme nights, referral contests, in house mini challenges
Level 5 Trainers:
- Exemplify all standards as above
- 2+ Years experience minimum
- Receive regular praise publicly and privately by clients (ex. Endorsements to leadership, on social media publicly or privately.)
- Have a strong track record for going “above and beyond.” (ex. Could be organizing a volunteer activity, taking initiative to organize a fundraiser, strong track record for assisting clients beyond the gym hours (while maintaining a work/life balance.)
- Strong track record for continual personal self-development (ex. Regular attendance to industry events, an average of one or more books/month related to any aspect of field.)
- Seeing regular weekly increases of 10+ net clients in home location.
- Regularly having weeks/months of minimal attrition (less than 2% of total members in month)
- Is directly or indirectly responsible for submission of high volume of before and afters. (2-3/week/trainer/location ex. 2 trainers = 8-12 before and afters/month of 20+ lbs lost.)
- Very active on social media (typically posts gold stars and work related moments 2-3/day on IG and or Facebook.)
- Active and regularly promoting the studio on personal social media (posting and tagging people in promotions, inviting personal circle of influence to try camps via 3 free/1 week free.)
- Is directly/indirectly responsible for high amounts of member referrals leading to sign ups (average of 5 signups or 5/10 referrals/trainer/month/location)
- Knows every client’s name and makes habit to use them frequently.
- Regularly demonstrates comprehensive knowledge and understanding of all components in training list (ex. Zen planner, etc)
- Regularly contributes educational content to the mailing list and other audience vehicles.
- Regularly engages in Facebook live/Instagram Live video educating or promoting the business.
YES! Contact me today to schedule a FREE no obligation consultation and trial workout.