When managing one to two facilities, for the most part you are a jack of all trades. As long as the facilities are within reasonable distance of each other, you can bounce back and forth between locations selling, training, doing office work, etc. The entire organization, for the most part, depends on you to run. You definitely have a few key people you can rely on, but at the same time, if you had to let them go, you could step into that position and do what you need to do. All processes and systems are in your head with a few processes and systems written down.
When you start scaling to three or more locations, things get tricky. Consider using these proven strategies to help you run your organization.
Daily:
On a daily basis, the owner or district manager should spend at least 60 minutes doing skills training with salespeople and trainers in that particular location. The type of training that is being done with every staff member is based on a weekly “Wildly Important Goal” (WIG) meeting that is held with each staff member.
On a daily basis, the owner or a regional should be helping the team with their daily SMaC recipe based on Jim Collins’ book, “Great By Choice.” The idea is to help your team improve on whatever skills then need to improve on, or assist with projects they are working on in preparation for the next WIG meeting.
On a daily basis, the owner or the regional manager must also hold sales or technical calls to help the rest of the company improve. Every time there is a new topic being coached, the owner or regional manager should record that session and repurpose it with other staff members. Over time, this is how you build a library of educational/development content.
Weekly:
On a weekly basis, the owner or regional manager must be holding WIG meetings based on a book called, “4 Disciplines Of Execution.” A WIG is something that needs to improve that would have the greatest impact on the organization.
For the most part, for salespeople, their WIG should be to focus on scheduling X amount of appointments per week and selling X amounts of memberships or personal training.
For trainers, their WIG should be based on sessions logged per week and Client Improvement Plans (CPI). Every trainer has clients who are struggling. It’s OK that clients struggle. What’s not OK is when a trainer knows about it and does nothing to help the client. Every trainer needs to put three clients every month on a CIP that requires trainers to go above and beyond on a daily basis for those clients.
During the WIG with every staff member, the owner or the regional manager checks in to see if what was supposed to get done last week actually got done. If there was a gap between the two, the owner or regional manager identifies the problem and then coaches that problem face to face and on the calls throughout the next week.
Twice a month:
The owner or regional manager holds a 4-6 hour training based on the challenges the company is experiencing. This should be tightly organized by the owner or regional manager with power points, handouts and quizzes. Record the training and continue to add to your educational/development content.
Once a month:
Hold a manager’s meeting where the owner or regional manager acknowledge staff for doing a great job. The top two or three salespeople should get special recognition. The top two or three trainers who logged the most amount of sessions should also get special recognition. A marketing plan along with goals for the company should be laid out and discussed. What’s critical with these meetings is to always cast a vision and don’t forget to have fun and be silly.
The owner or regional manager should sit down and do a SWOT analysis for the organization. Based on that, there should be a detailed plan of where regional managers will spend their time, meaning which club, what they are going to do, and when they are going to do it. All group trainings are set and talked about during the manager’s meeting. Nothing should be left up to chance. The idea is to hit 100% of goal every month. All aspects of the business must be intentional in order for that to happen. Time management from your executive team is critical in making this work.
Every four months:
Every four months have a review with every staff member to make sure they are developing and doing what they are supposed to be doing to ensure a raise once a year. In my opinion, a raise should be given to someone based on what they’ve done, not necessarily how long they’ve been with your organization. Have a specific list of things to do for every staff member laid out four months at a time.
Every two months:
Whether you do this every two months or every six weeks, bottom line, every client must go through a fitness evaluation to check to see if clients are progressing toward their fitness goals. We assess our clients aesthetically (body scans), mechanically (FMS), and their performance. These assessments give us data that is then entered into a spreadsheet.
About seven to 10 days after an evaluation of all your clientele, the owner or regional manager must sit down with every trainer and go line by line and identify if each individual client is on pace to hit a goal they sought out to accomplish since the purchase of their training program. If not, then what is the trainer doing about it? What’s important to remember is with all these studios and franchises entering the business, customer experience (fun the clients are having and results they are seeing) will be the deciding factor on whether or not they will stay with you long term.
Probably the most important factor of all when managing multiple gyms and building an organization is to have core values and a culture that focuses on fun, results and giving back. “Tribal Leadership” and “Delivering Happiness” are both wonderful resources that talk about how to set the right culture or fix a bad one and what is an example of solid core values.
