May 15, 2025 • 33 mins
Staffing problems can destroy your gym’s momentum—and your sanity. But with the right systems and mindset, they’re solvable.
In this episode of Run a Profitable Gym, host Mike Warkentin talks with gym owner Chris Williams about the staffing chaos he inherited when he bought his gym.
Chris shares the HR disasters that nearly wrecked his business and lays out the steps he took to rebuild trust, create structure and increase professionalism.
He explains how he turned a gym run by friends into a real business and gained the freedom to step away from day-to-day operations.
He also breaks down his evaluation system, describes his pathways for staff advancement and explains how he approaches hard conversations with employees.
Staffing problems aren't unavoidable, but they are fixable. Tune in to become a better leader for your team!
For more help, use the link below to join Gym Owners United and get the free “7 Deadly Sins of Staffing” guide.
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0:37 - Staffing horror stories
11:27 - Systemizing the business
13:48 - Documenting roles and responsibilities
20:24 - Preventing staffing issues
28:20 - What gym owners can do today
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Staffing issues. If you own a gym, you're gonna
deal with them at some point.
Today on Run a Profitable Gym,we're gonna talk about how to
get through the hard parts andcome out stronger on the other
side. I'm your host, Mike Kinan. Please hit subscribe wherever
you are with my thanks. Myguest today, Chris Williams. He
owns a pair of gyms in Tracy ,California. Chris, welcome to
the show. Are you ready to tellsome war stories?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Oh, yeah. No, I got, I got a war chest of stories.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Let's open the chest and get right to it. I need to
hear about the dark days solisteners know what you've been
through. It'll make them feelbetter about what , what
they're going through. What arethe worst staffing problems
that you've dealt with? Give methe dirt,
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Man. I think , uh, when I first wanted to buy the
gym, I was a prominent member.
I was one of those fun timeguys. So, you know that, that
context switch was massive. And, um, the GM at the time and
the head coach were married,and they were very close
(00:57):
friends of mine. We partied,hung out a lot. Mm-hmm
. Traveled. Sowhen I took over the gym, I
figured , all right , thiswould be a smooth transition.
Like, the relationship's great,but it was just almost a flip.
Like the GM kind of justflipped and was more
territorial and likeaccusatory. You're always
looking over my shoulder andI'm like, yeah, I'm learning.
(01:18):
I'm learning what you do. I'mlearning the business. Mm-hmm .
I'm trying to orient myselfinto this new situation. Uh ,
but it was always fun as, oh,well you're , uh, you're
looking over my shoulder.
You're micromanaging. Even if Iwould just be sitting there
learning, taking notes andbeing actively telling her ,
I'm just learning. So explainstuff to me. Answer this
, you know,
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Where do we keep the toner for the photocopier?
Right, right . , thatkinda stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, that relationship between her, the
husband and wife fractured dueto some illicit is issues. Yeah
. And then suddenly she quit.
He quit and she wanted a partyRight. To like commemorate her
time. behind my back.
(02:02):
He threw the party and coachedit, which was like, looked ,
made it look like I plannedthis as like an f you to her.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Oh ,
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah. So this whole thing happened behind my back.
It was just, it was a , himgetting at me, her getting
right, but also getting at her.
And it was just, you know, so Ijust kind of let my guard down
a little too much with peoplethat I thought were close
friends and it turned out to bekind of a disaster. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
So you're coming into this, you're just trying
to figure out a business, butyou're going from the fun guy
to the boss and you gotta unssort sort everything out, which
you can't because you've gotlike things going on in the
middle that you can't control.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Right. And I'm making mistakes in terms of
what I'm telling them or youknow, talking to 'em as a
friend when I'm realizing Ishould be talking to 'em as a
boss. And
Speaker 1 (02:46):
That's hard 'cause you were, you were the friend
at one point, right?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I had to, I had to really switch contexts and
realize I have to have otherpeople to vent to that're not
members or staff of my gymbecause they're seeing it from
an angle. They , they'll neverunderstand.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
This is so common because we all hire our
friends. Yep .
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Mm-hmm
. Yep . Or you inherit a gym
with that all your friends workat.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
That's the other one right there. So did did you,
you managed this Well , we'llget to the sorting things out
thing. You got any other goodones in there that were gnarly?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Okay. Like , gimme a few more.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I'll give you some context on this one. Yeah . The
coach has been with us sincebefore I had been been a
member. So it must have been atthis point, eight years plus.
Mm-hmm . A veryprominent member. And, you
know, part-time coach pandemichits . I'm watching my
full-time coaches struggle tolive. Um, I'm doing everything
I can to help, but at thatpoint I had a realization that
my full-time coaches need to betruly full-time. They needed
(03:38):
the opportunities to make areal full-time living. So if
anything ever happened again,they could, they could succeed
and make it through and havesome savings and everything
else. And I need to do a betterjob of offering those
opportunities. So coming outtathe pandemic, she's got all
sorts of personal politicalstuff. Her husband's a cop,
it's just an issue. There'sjust issues all over California
at the time and Yep . It's areally heightened , uh,
(04:01):
sociopolitical situation,environment in the gym. So
trying to navigate all thesethings and , um, I sat every
single coach down and I said,Hey, listen, you're part-time.
Here's something I want you towork on. Here's what I'm
working on. We're all gonnawork on these improvements as
we roll the gym back out.
Mm-hmm
Speaker 1 (04:20):
.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
What I can guarantee you is as the full-timers get
settled, you'll have classesagain. But until we're back to
a full schedule, full-timersare getting priority. Mm-hmm
. Everybody wasfine with that other than this
one coach. Oh, they want me towork on anatomy. They don't
think I know what I'm talkingabout. They don't think I'm
good enough.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Oh. You know , didn't
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Take feedback. Know I just serve classes. Mm-hmm
. Overfull-timers 'cause I've been
here longer. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Right . That's a tough spot. 'cause like the
pandemic caused , you had tomake hard decisions. Right .
And you're doing this to tryand preserve what you can
because of all the restrictionsand all the chaos going on. And
now you're stuck with thisperson who's just pushing back.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Right. And I know they had a lot of personal
issues going on mm-hmm . And I think a
lot of that came to fruition. Ithink she was ready for a
change in terms of her ownfitness and what she was doing.
And this was just a great out.
Um, and something I'll pointout, if you've ever been there
or if you haven't been there,you're gonna be there no matter
what. Even in a positive exit,if they want to, you are gonna
(05:22):
be the villain every time. Yeah. If they feel uncomfortable
telling people the real reasonthey left, I got a better job.
I needed a change in my fitnessenvironment, I just wasn't
getting enough hours. Whateverit is, generally speaking,
they're not gonna be willing,if they're uncomfortable saying
that, they're just gonna throwit on you. He's, he's an a-hole
. He's, you know, amonster. He treated me poorly,
(05:44):
turned his back on me, you know, whatever it takes to get the
spotlight off them.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
So did that , that happened. Oh yeah . That's
essentially what happened. Andyou hear that a lot with people
where coaches for whateverreason have to be let go or
they choose to go and then theyjust leave these like Kool-Aid
man gaping burning holes in thewall on their way out. Right.
And it , it's, it's bad.
Anything else in the, in thetickle trunk?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Oh, yeah. Um, so , uh, let's getting started. I
had a , I had a GM a coupleyears ago who was going through
her own issues again, seems tobe the common theme mm-hmm
. And , um, atone point I just won some
awards and she felt shedeserved the spotlight for
(06:27):
those awards. So I got sat downand told, don't des you don't
deserve those. The spotlightshould be on me and the staff
and like, you should bethanking me. And I'm like, the
award is for staff development.
Mm-hmm . Right.
It's an award I got because Iput the money and time into
developing you guys and givingyou these opportunities. So I'm
not sure how that is a staffaward mm-hmm . Or
(06:51):
an award for someone that isliterally getting thousands of
dollars in development everymonth. You have your own
mentor, you have, you go tothings like the two brain
summit, you go to other summitsfor other parts of the
industry. Like, I'm not surewhere that, where this is
coming from. Fast forward abouta year, my goal with my GMs is
always, this is a steppingstone for you. Mm-hmm
(07:13):
. Two to two tofive years max, but really two
to three years you should beputting your resume out there,
seeing what you're worth. Andfor a lot of them, at least two
out of the three I've had,they've stepped up to six
figure incomes Wow . When theydo that. So for me, I'm always
telling them, put your resumeout there at around two years.
Start putting your resume outthere. I know I can't give you
(07:36):
a hundred thousand dollars ayear. Just the job does not
require that. And its skilllevel isn't there, but your,
your resume is going to speakto someone that can do a six
figure income job. So did that,gave the notice. Apparently I
wasn't upset enough about herleaving
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Speaker 2 (07:59):
And having developed my personal assistant to become
a leader in the company. I hadan immediate segue . Yeah. So
it wasn't this long drawn out.
I don't know what we're gonnado. I don't know how we'll
replace you. Just publicfireworks.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Oh
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Okay . So that's, that's three of your many
stories of, of yeah . Justnegative stuff. And listeners,
you probably have your ownstories out there or you've
heard of stuff. I have heard somuch stuff when I put this
post-op asking , uh, who's inin our tinker group who's dealt
with staffing problems. We gota bunch of crazy stuff in
there. Everyone's dealt withit. You are not alone. You're
not the only person. Our mostsuccessful gym owners, that's
(08:40):
the tinkerers. They are, youknow, millionaire gym owners
essentially running veryprofitable enterprises. They've
all dealt with staffing issues.
It is part of the game. HR is adifficult, difficult thing. So
you are not alone. And we'regonna talk about some solutions
for some of this stuff. Chris,talk to me about like, when you
were going through these toughtimes, how did you feel about
your business? And then how didthese problems affect clients?
(09:00):
Because let's really talk wherethe rubber meets the road
because the client Yeah . Theclients have to be happy. And
if they're not, you got an evenbigger problem than staff
problems.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
What I have found countless times the , I
mentioned the three, I'veprobably had at least 20 other
member or other, you know, egosituations. What I've come to
find is people are , um, what Icall front page news chasers.
Hmm . They want the headline ofthe day. That headline is going
to last a week, two weeks topsbefore a new headline hits the
(09:33):
world. And they're all runningto flock to gaw at that new
thing. Mm-hmm.
And you know, I always use thisexample because I , it just
blew me away. We'd be in aCrossFit owner Facebook group
and a guy would get caughtdoing something very pervy with
cameras and whatever, and thatthat comment section would
(09:53):
flood for about eight daysuntil the new drama hits the po
hits the group. Yeah . Silence.
Yeah . And this guy'scompletely forgotten about. Huh
. So to me, there's really nothing that you can do, even if
you were in completely in thewrong. There is nothing unless
it's something super egregiousand like what that guy did with
(10:13):
the bathrooms and the camera .
It's like, if it's nothingegregious, if it's just simple
human error or maybe emotion'sgot the best of you, or they're
just in their own feels andmaking you out to be a monster,
you just gotta weather it for alittle bit and that next
headline's gonna hit and thenthis is gonna be forgotten
about. It's old news.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah. That's good advice. And I, I didn't deal
with like really horrible staff, people exiting and so forth,
but I did deal with changes andit , it was hard because there
were people that were veryclosely tied into the fabric of
the business and I was justterrified that when they leave,
everyone would leave. And so,you know, listeners, if you're
out there, time heals allwounds and it's not gonna be
bad as you think You have to,you know, Chris Cooper has one
(10:53):
that he says, if , uh, the onlyway out is through and you just
have to kind of weather thestorm, the best thing you can
do is keep moving forward andrealize that like the staff,
people are not your business.
They can be a huge part of yourbusiness and it's on you as the
owner to develop them and makethem part of that. But if you
do have to make a change forthe benefit of the business and
your clients, you have to dothat and keep pushing through.
Let's talk a little bit aboutthat. Uh, you know, you talk
(11:16):
about being a new gym owner andso forth, you know , what was
the first step to solving thesestaffing problems and how did
you find the courage to takeit? Because it is hard. HR is
not at my alley. I strugglewith it. Many people do.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So first thing I did when I bought the gym was I
realized everybody was beingpaid the same regardless of
their scale , leveler,certification level, education,
et cetera. So I created atiered system. I borrowed one
from Jason Kpa . Mm-hmm . Went searching
through the doldrums of theFacebook groups and mm-hmm
. Found , uh,everything I could and kind of
compiled my own version. Sopeople had a , had a ladder of
(11:48):
achievement. They didn't feellike, all right , now I'm a
coach. That's it. There's nomore, I can't grow. There's no
reason to get better. I, thefirst thing I instilled was we
have a growth mindset here.
Everybody should be constantlygrowing. I offer continuing
education credit up to athousand dollars for my top
tier coaches, because if you'reat that level, you're , your
education is much like you'regoing to really high level
(12:10):
certs mm-hmm . Toget any new information. So I
wanna make sure they feel likeit's valuable to do. And , um,
that really helped. It, it kindof flushed out those people
that were happy to just be herewith a free membership and like
work out with their friendsbecause they just end up
working out in class if therewas all their friends and
mm-hmm . Youknow, it just rid of the
(12:30):
amateur belief system andallowed us to bring in a fresh
wave of professionals thatclearly did not fully separate
itself until after thepandemic.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
So . So would it be fair to say that systemizing
and professionalizing yourbusiness was the first step to
starting to solve staffproblems?
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah. Not to say to the old owners to give them
credit. It was veryprofessionalized. Yeah . There
was just certain parts of theHR that needed work and
elevation, because I could seethat people were very much in
that like cruise control mode.
Mm-hmm . Therewas no need to get better.
There was no need to improve,there was no need to
professionalize because themoney's never getting better.
(13:10):
It's never gonna change myworth. It's never gonna change
what's expected of me.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
When you bought the business, were there documented
roles, responsibilities, andcontracts and everything?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
There was some expect expectations and basic
guidelines, but when I createdthat tiered system, I was able
to elevate that and make itmore specific based on your
role, based on, you know,you're a level one CrossFit
coach, you want to get paidmore, you have a couple
options, you can go get yourCrossFit level two, or you can
coach X amount of classes aweek, elevate the amount of
(13:40):
classes you coach. 'cause nowyou're, you're increasing the
value of your time becauseyou're helping me make sure I'm
not constantly scrambling tocover.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Mm-hmm. Did you do any
real work after that to startlooking at like roles and
responsibilities and like,clearly making adjustments
there? And , and then the otherquestion after that, so you've
done that. How did you, did youput in like staff evaluations
and a regular schedule, thatkind of thing?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
You know , I wish I would've mm-hmm .
Um , not until I got with TwoBrain did I realize how
important that stuff is as abunch of very much a visionary,
like 95, 98 on the visionaryscale. I think it's , uh, the
integrator, visionary scale.
Like I'm Ming the nineties andmm-hmm . My GM is
up in the nineties as anoperator. So we balance each
other out. I'm generally up inthe cloud. So, you know, things
(14:24):
like reviews and, you know,consistent coaching and
consistent management wasn't inmy toolbox until I went out and
got mentors to help me, youknow, realize these things are
important.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Well, let's dig into that. And that's like, how does
a mentor fit into this plan?
Because again, you came intothis, you bought this business,
you had to sort out some stuffthat was gnarly. And I, I
started, I didn't do that. Ididn't buy it . I started one,
but I didn't know anything. Ididn't have no clue what I was
doing. I could teach a squatand that was about it. And I
got into myself into trouble aswell. So where does a mentor
come in and how does that helpyou then solve and prevent
(14:59):
staff problems and createcareers?
Speaker 2 (15:01):
I think it's a lot about finding someone that's
carved a path you're trying towalk. Hmm . So if you're
walking through the jungle,which is essentially what it is
when you're starting or buyinga business that isn't
professionalized to that level,you are walking through the
jungle and just kind ofmacheing your way through. Not
really sure if you're going inthe right direction, if you've
(15:22):
been going in circles, ifyou're going backwards, you
have no idea. Mm-hmm. Right? You're
walking completely blind. Whenyou get a mentor, they kind of
pull the foliage up and go,Hey, look at this path that's
already been carved. Why don'tyou go this way? And then you
get ,
Speaker 1 (15:37):
It's way easier and shorter. Yeah .
Speaker 2 (15:38):
You go , you go these forks in the road and
they go, well, you could gothat way and I support you if
you do, but I would recommendexploring this path and here's
why. 'cause here's what I'veseen during my years and how I
got to where I'm at. Mm-hmm. So it's just a
lot of just, it's, it's a lotof guidance. It's , uh, I
always say the, the mentor isthe guide and the, the mentee
(15:59):
is the hero. So their job isjust to kind of guide you along
the path and make sure thatyou're supported. And you know,
when you are stressing outbecause an employee decided to
run your name through the mudand try to wreck your, your
image in town, they're there tolisten and allow you to vent.
Or when I might have told mymentor that I'm glad I have a
lot of firefighters here 'causeI'm ready to burn this place to
(16:21):
the ground. You know, it's ,uh, it , it's good to have
someone that can go, yeah, it'sa good idea, but why don't we
try maybe going for a 30 minutewalk and then see if you still
want to burn it to the ground.
Ah , it's a good idea. I'll go. You know, so sometimes it's
little things , sometimes it'sbigger, like, hey, we need to
completely change your , uh,pricing and delivery of your
(16:41):
sales.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah. And it can be as simple as, and here's a
common one. You can trade amembership for part-time
coaching, or you can documentroles and responsibilities and
create a fair hourly rate thatthen you pay to those coaches
and you build this into yourprofit and loss statement so
that these costs are accountedfor in a very clear way. So at
some point, if you wannaoffload more of the roles or
(17:05):
the coaches, the classes thatyou coach as the owner, you can
do that because you know theprice and these costs are built
in stuff like that where you,you know, 'cause I ran into
problems with that where I , Ihired all my friends at the
beginning. It's like, these arethe best people, you know ,
take senator across with levelone. And they, they turned out,
they were great coaches, butthey only coach say eight
classes a month or somethinglike that. Which isn't a bad
thing, but it's not, you can't,it's hard to build a business
(17:27):
without a stable presence ofstaff. That was me originally,
but I couldn't handle thevolume of that. So I had to
start pushing stuff outelsewhere. And I didn't know
how to do it. I also didn'thave the funds to do it because
everything was traded for freemembership. I had my, you know,
I didn't pay myself. It was adisaster. So a mentor can help
you see these things right awayand say, wait a second, we
gonna , we have to take a hardlook at this, this and make
(17:49):
sure that we take the rightsteps so that you end up in the
right spot. A big part of itfor me also was contracts and
roles and responsibilitieslisted out. 'cause you, you
were good. You had that before.
I did. I didn't have that stuffand it was just like, coach a
class, be good at it. Andluckily my coaches happened to
be pretty good at it and itworked out okay. But there was
no formal, you know , SOPs,procedures and things got a
(18:10):
little weird at times becausepeople would create their own
adventures. And once Isystemized things and said,
this is the staff playbook,this is the way it goes, things
went much, much better becausepeople were on the same page
and it allowed you to hirebetter. That's a question I'll
ask you because you have yourbusiness more or less
systemized and you have thesethings down. Is it much easier
to hire and find new people andbring them in?
Speaker 2 (18:30):
You know, I think with coaching it, it's as
difficult if not more difficultthan ever. I think the pandemic
really changed the, theenvironment. A lot of coaches
switch careers. Yeah . So a lotof career coaches abandoned
this industry because honestlyas owners we were barely
getting by. So I'm sure a lotof professional coaches felt
(18:50):
abandoned. Yeah. They felt likethe , these guys can't help me
now I gotta get to somewherethat can help me if something
like this happens again and Idon't blame them. Mm-hmm
. So I think thecareer coach thing is a lot
more difficult to find thesedays. I think what we're, what
we're finding is hiring fromwithin and cultivating coaches
out of our membership are greatfor group. Mm-hmm
(19:13):
. I don't necessarily recommendthat if you're looking for
someone that's gonna do pt,semi-private, little higher
level , high ticket options.
But you know, in terms of agroup coach, they've got bit by
the bug of whatever you'redoing. They love what you do.
They have experienced what agreat class feels like. They
know what it is. Mm-hmm . They just need
(19:33):
to be taught how to do itthemselves, how to replicate
that. So mm-hmmfor us, we found a lot of
success hiring from within. Onecaveat to that is we've
realized even with benchcoaches, there's a lot of free
memberships if you're giving amembership as employment perks.
Mm-hmm . So we'veswitched to a minimum of 10
classes a month or a four hourshift a week. So they could be
(19:57):
an admin, they could go, theycould be the maintenance guy
and help us with fixing bikesand rowers and other things. If
that's something they're reallygood at. And they come in on
like a Sunday and they do that,but whatever it is, they're
doing some sort of four hourshift or coaching 10 hours a
month. Mm-hmm .
That qualifies you for a freemembership, otherwise you're
still paying a membership andwe pay you to coach.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
So structure, you've got structure in place and
you've got a plan in place,which are two huge things. I'll
ask you this, how do youprevent your staffing issues?
You, I covered a lot of stuff,but I'm wondering if you have
any specifics of how youprevent staffing issues from
arising and what's your plan ifsomething does pop up, how are
you gonna roll out your fix?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
So we prevent, we've prevented a lot of things over
the years from edu fromcommunication. Mm-hmm
. Ah , there ,roadmap meetings, constant
communication. But the numberone thing that I think everyone
struggles with, myselfincluded, is taking action when
it's a little tiny ember.
Right. It's a little tiny
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Ember .
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Put that , yep . Go walk up, have that what you
think is gonna be a reallydifficult conversation that
we've played out in our head tobe a massive issue. And it
generally turns out to be a ,oh my bad, I didn't even
realize I was doing that. I'llget that corrected. Thank you
for bringing it to my attentionand it's done and that EMS out.
Mm-hmm . But youlet it sit there and then it
catches a little bit of grass and then it catches the
(21:18):
tall yellow grass and thenyou've got this massive fire
mm-hmm . And it'sspread to other people who are
now pointing at each othergoing, well you didn't tell
that person to do that. Wellthat person does that wrong and
that per 'cause now you've gotthem on the defense 'cause you
are mm-hmm . Andyou're probably coming at them
from an aggressive standpointrather than a caring one. So
for me that's, that's thenumber one thing is take action
(21:39):
early, nip it in the butt asfast as possible.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah. And do you do that on the fly or do you have
standardized scheduled meetingswith coaches?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
We have standardized scheduled meetings, but at the
same time if something is goingawry, I don't have a problem
walking in and just going, Hey,I noticed you're not wearing a
CF T-shirt. Did you just forgetit? Is it right? Oh yeah. I
totally forgot it. I, I promiselike this is one time thing I ,
it won't happen again. Cool. Noproblem. They're aware, you're
(22:08):
aware. If it happens again,obviously it gets a little bit
more serious of a conversation.
But you know, sometimes it'sjust as simple as like letting
them know that you saw it andthem getting the chance to let
you know that they're awaremm-hmm . And that
they care so there's no awkwardsilence or uneasy around each
other. 'cause you're both kindof afraid to broach the
(22:29):
subject.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I'll give you a shameful example from my own
past. We had a back door from aparking lot where I'm here ,
it's cold and crappy. Sothere's always like in winter
it's like dirt and muck andsalt and whatever and sand. So
people come in the back door ofthe coaches, they'd walk across
the training floor and turn offthe alarm and open the front
door and they would inevitablyleave these gigantic ugly
footprints and leave muddyboots in stupid places. And I
(22:52):
could not bring myself to stepon that ember. Instead I got
passive aggressive and I drewgiant chalk circles around the
feet and said, stop doing this.
And ridiculous stuff like that.
Just shameful. If I had justhad that conversation and said,
Hey man, take shoes off theback door or to the entire
staff, it would've been so muchbetter. But instead I let that
one sit , just sit. And I gotmadder and madder and
(23:13):
eventually it came out in oneof those everything ketchup
bottle things where I'm madabout this and this and this
and the shoes. Right. And it'sjust like, that's not a good
way to be a boss. And so ChrisCooper has talked about this
one, have these regularmeetings with your coaches and
Oscar Jo had one of our mentorsin Sweden gave another tip
saying tell them at everysingle meeting you'll give them
(23:33):
something to work on. Thatmeans that A, you don't have
meetings only when you're mad.
So people know they're coming,they know as soon like, Hey
Chris, let's have a meeting.
And you're like, oh God, nowwhat? You know, it's not one of
those, it's like it's regularscheduled programming,
everything's fine. And theyknow at that meeting they're
gonna get something to work on.
So you talked about that onecoach's like, oh everything's
fine. I don't need to work onanatomy or whatever. They know
(23:53):
you are getting some piece offeedback to make you better
because continual improvementis part of our mission here at
this gym. Something like that.
So there are two huge things.
Do you have regular staffmeetings, Chris?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
We have a quarterly all staff meetings. Everybody
comes together. Yep . We dolunch, we break things down. I
talk about the quarterly focusand then we're bringing back,
now that we have a new headcoach in place, we're bringing
back monthly coach meetings.
Nice. Where they'll do some,we'll have somebody come in and
do a development talk. So it'llbe like a special a talk. Like
(24:26):
we have a coach coming intomorrow , uh, or no SAT
Saturday that will discusssemi-private like programming,
retention. 'cause that's all hedoes over here at my, all at my
other gym. Altamont PerformanceLab . Mm-hmm . So
he's an expert on this. He'sbeen doing personal training
for 20 years. So he's gonnacome drop knowledge on our
CrossFit coaches who aren't ascomfortable with programming
(24:48):
for a private or semi-privatestrength focused client.
They're not as comfortable withhow do I retain someone and
keep the communication positiveand and fun for 60 minutes with
just one or four people versus15 mm-hmm . So
we're , we're starting thatcadence. Um , we do monthly
staff, non-mandatory staffdinner. So I will either take
(25:11):
them out to dinner somewherefun. I like that.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Or
Speaker 2 (25:14):
I'll host a dinner at my house. Like I , I love to
barbecue so I'll host 'em atthe house. One of my other
staff just bought a cool housewith a party backyard. So she's
inviting them all over herhouse for one Yeah . In July.
So yeah, we try to do thatevery month.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
I like the non-mandatory part where it's
like, this is just a casualthing, you wanna come cool if
you can't, no worries. And, butit's a team building. I like
that a lot. Yep . Uh, and thenyou mentioned it before, I just
wanna confirm it. Careerindividual stuff. How often
does that happen or performancereviews?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Roadmaps are probably every 90 to a hundred
to six months depending onwhere they're at. We try to at
least get it twice a year. Forour newer staff, it's probably
every 90 days for the firstyear. Mm-hmm .
Just to make sure that like, ifthey're improving rapidly or if
things aren't working, we cankind of, you know, the old
proverbial get 'em in the rightseat if they're in the wrong
seat. Yeah . 'cause a lot oftimes we have the right
(26:03):
personality that we just havethem in the wrong seat mm-hmm
. So we need tobe able to be flexible and ,
and get that done quickly. Um,so we can keep these right
personalities and rightattitudes and just get 'em
somewhere where they're more,you know, functional.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So two to four times a year you're meeting with the
coaches and does that includeevaluations in there as well?
Or is that something you doseparately?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
So evaluations , uh, we do form , we're planning
formal evaluations every sixmonths for a year. Yep . Okay .
And then , um, I think my headcoach said she's gonna do
informal monthly. So justpoking in, giving them some
feedback if they have somethingreally, really glaring that
they're working on, she's gonnabe more formal with her reviews
(26:45):
mm-hmm . To makesure that they're improving
rapidly. We also have a coachthat's the head of coaching
development. So if it'ssomething really glaring on the
coaching side, they'll go workwith him to specifically
improve mm-hmm .
That part of their game. Butfor the most part, our coaches,
it's, it's a lot more of like,Hey, you're getting to people
two times a class, get to thema third time. Just be more
(27:06):
aware, be more mindful of yourtime management. Or maybe
they're afraid to cue theveteran people that are, can
lift more than them or maybeare they feel like have better
technique. And I always tell'em , there's always something
you can give them . Mm-hmm . Always mm-hmm
. Even if it's ajoke, like, hey, your left
foot's uh , a fraction of aninch ahead of your right. Go
ahead and clean that up.
. They they, they findthat funny. They get it, they
(27:28):
know what's going on. They knowyou're trying to find something
and they appreciate it. Yeah .
Speaker 1 (27:31):
But what I see here from you is you have scheduled
stuff. So I've asked you like,when are you doing wit what,
and you've got an answer forall of that. But then you also
have someone whose job yourhead coach is, is to check on
things regularly. So there'salmost this, I mean, it's ,
it's not informal, but it's nota scheduled meeting, but it's
just like, hey, let's try thisor do things. So someone is
responsible for improving yourcoaches. Uh , two brand
(27:52):
listeners if you're a client,I've got some very exciting
stuff. Uh , Carlsberg and OscarJo Head are going to be talking
about Coach Ascension models atthe two brainin summit and
rolling out some very, veryexciting stuff available for
two Brainin clients. Uh, I'veseen these spreadsheets, they
are incredible. And it talksabout all the different ways
that you can evaluate anddevelop coaches to make careers
for them . This includes likehow to pay them more and how to
(28:14):
do these things. So if you'recoming to the two brain summit,
you are in for a real treat.
And I hope you guys will take alook at that talk as we close
this out. Chris, I'm gonna askyou this one. So gym owners are
out there. If they've clickedinto this show, they're
probably because they're have astressful problem on their
hands right now. How can a gymowner who's dealing with a
staffing problem today startsolving it right away after she
stops listening to this show ?
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Prioritize the importance of that situation.
So for us, naturally, we'regoing to put the most , um,
intimidating conversations atthe bottom of the list and try
to hide them and bury them asfar down as you can go.
. Yeah. But realistically, youshould be starting with the
(28:55):
hardest conversations at thetop of your list. Because a lot
of times those are the onesthat are causing 80% of your
problems is
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Rip the bandaid off, eh,
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Right? Mm-hmm . 'cause if you
rip the bandaid off, you mightfind it's a festering wound
that's literally causing all ofyour problems and getting this
one thing done all of a suddenalleviates 80, 90% of your
stress about all these thingson your list. And you realize,
oh, I've just got a couple realeasy conversations left. Mm-hmm
. And I , I don'tthink we realize it 'cause we
(29:24):
kind of just put our blinderson and, you know, hope for the
best with these things.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yeah. And if you're like me, if you, if you're
avoiding something and you'reputting stuff in front of that,
you're not giving your fullattention to the stuff you
should be focusing on becauseit's just solely there to get
in the way of the stuff youshould be doing. Uh , are you
very direct, like when you talkto, to someone, staff members
now , uh, does that get easier?
Like if it , is it easier tostep on that ember and just
say, Hey dude, this is wrong.
Can you fix that? Or is itstill that squidgy, ah , I
(29:48):
gotta work yourself up for it?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
So it's a little bit of both. I'm fortunate that I
have a management layer inbetween. So I don't have a lot
of these like simpleconversations anymore. Mm-hmm
. Because Ireally am not in the day-to-day
as much as I used to be. Nice.
But when it comes down to likehigher level conversations or
even I have to have theseconversations with my
management team, right? Right .
Your management team is notyou. They're not perfect. You
(30:11):
are not perfect. These samethings, I still have to manage
them and I still have to belike, on top of things that I
can't allow to slide. Like,hey, communication's not where
it needs to be. I'm noticingtexts are falling through. What
can we do to systemize this andfix it? Or what was the most
recent one? I think we werejust having some issues with
billing and things fallingthrough the cracks and hey, are
(30:32):
we calling these people? Whatare we doing? A lot of times
it's just a question if youframe it as a question rather
than a, Hey, you're doing this,it's a, hey, this is going on,
what do you think? Is theresomething we can do to get
better?
Speaker 1 (30:43):
That's a good one.
That's much lessconfrontational. Right?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
You , if you approach it from a care versus
confrontation standpoint,you're gonna get a completely
different response. You're notgonna put them on the
defensive, you're not gonna putthem in a position of like all
of a sudden they're in fight orflight. They're thinking I'm
about to get fired. Like thisis gonna go terrible 'cause
they think the same way you do.
We're all human, we all go tothe immediate worst case
(31:08):
scenario. So if you're puttingthem in that confrontational
space, they're immediatelygoing, I'm about to get fired,
so screw it, I'm gonna let 'emhave it
Speaker 1 (31:15):
. Yeah . And
that's when you start getting
holes burned in the , on theway out and so forth. Uh, so I
I , I think the best plan herefor listeners is if you've got
a stabbing problem right now,address it head on , get it out
of your way so you can get backto growing your business. If
you're struggling with thatbadly, I'd encourage you to use
the link in the show notes,book a call and talk to , to
(31:35):
brain mentor about it. That'sit . What you do there is
you're going to get, everythingin your business is gonna get
analyzed, including staffingproblems. And a mentor can show
you, as Chris said, this is thepath I think we should take.
Here are your options. The ,this is the probably the
preferred one if we go thisroute. This is how you do it.
It's a step-by-step plan thathelps you systemize your
business, get the right peoplein the right seats, and then
(31:57):
help them improve throughmentorship because you will
become mentor to your staff andthen build a business where
coaches have great careers andget great results for clients.
It's a whole system. Christy ,it worked for you, correct?
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah. Our revenue's through theroof. I have the right team in
place. I am almost completelyremoved from both of the
businesses. So I'm living thedream and a
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Lot of , and this is after coming in right now
coming , yeah. And this isafter coming in with , uh,
fires to put out immediately asan owner . Oh yeah.
Thanks so much for being here,Chris. I appreciate your time
and sharing your , your warstories and your solutions with
gym owners.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
My pleasure. Happy to help Mike. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
That was Chris Williams. This is Run a
Profitable Gym . Thanks so muchfor listening. Please hit
subscribe on the way out withmy thanks. And now here's to
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Rain founder Chris Cooper with a final message for
you. Hey, it's Tub Brainfounder Chris Cooper. With a
quick note , we created the GymOwners United Facebook group to
help you run a profitable gym.
Thousands of gym owners, justlike you have already joined in
the group. We share soundadvice about the business of
fitness. Every day I answerquestions, I run free webinars
(32:59):
and I give away all kinds ofgreat resources to help you
grow your gym. I'd love to haveyou in that group. It's Gym
Owners United on Facebook, orgo to gym owners united.com to
join. Do it today.
Staffing issues. If you own a gym, you're gonna
deal with them at some point.
Today on Run a Profitable Gym,we're gonna talk about how to
get through the hard parts andcome out stronger on the other
side. I'm your host, Mike Kinan. Please hit subscribe wherever
you are with my thanks. Myguest today, Chris Williams. He
owns a pair of gyms in Tracy ,California. Chris, welcome to
the show. Are you ready to tellsome war stories?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Oh, yeah. No, I got, I got a war chest of stories.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Let's open the chest and get right to it. I need to
hear about the dark days solisteners know what you've been
through. It'll make them feelbetter about what , what
they're going through. What arethe worst staffing problems
that you've dealt with? Give methe dirt,
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Man. I think , uh, when I first wanted to buy the
gym, I was a prominent member.
I was one of those fun timeguys. So, you know that, that
context switch was massive. And, um, the GM at the time and
the head coach were married,and they were very close
(00:57):
friends of mine. We partied,hung out a lot. Mm-hmm
figured , all right , thiswould be a smooth transition.
Like, the relationship's great,but it was just almost a flip.
Like the GM kind of justflipped and was more
territorial and likeaccusatory. You're always
looking over my shoulder andI'm like, yeah, I'm learning.
(01:18):
I'm learning what you do. I'mlearning the business. Mm-hmm .
I'm trying to orient myselfinto this new situation. Uh ,
but it was always fun as, oh,well you're , uh, you're
looking over my shoulder.
You're micromanaging. Even if Iwould just be sitting there
learning, taking notes andbeing actively telling her ,
I'm just learning. So explainstuff to me. Answer this
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Where do we keep the toner for the photocopier?
Right, right .
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, that relationship between her, the
husband and wife fractured dueto some illicit is issues. Yeah
. And then suddenly she quit.
He quit and she wanted a partyRight. To like commemorate her
time.
(02:02):
He threw the party and coachedit, which was like, looked ,
made it look like I plannedthis as like an f you to her.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Oh ,
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah. So this whole thing happened behind my back.
It was just, it was a , himgetting at me, her getting
right, but also getting at her.
And it was just, you know, so Ijust kind of let my guard down
a little too much with peoplethat I thought were close
friends and it turned out to bekind of a disaster. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
So you're coming into this, you're just trying
to figure out a business, butyou're going from the fun guy
to the boss and you gotta unssort sort everything out, which
you can't because you've gotlike things going on in the
middle that you can't control.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Right. And I'm making mistakes in terms of
what I'm telling them or youknow, talking to 'em as a
friend when I'm realizing Ishould be talking to 'em as a
boss. And
Speaker 1 (02:46):
That's hard 'cause you were, you were the friend
at one point, right?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I had to, I had to really switch contexts and
realize I have to have otherpeople to vent to that're not
members or staff of my gymbecause they're seeing it from
an angle. They , they'll neverunderstand.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
This is so common because we all hire our
friends. Yep .
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Mm-hmm
with that all your friends workat.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
That's the other one right there. So did did you,
you managed this Well , we'llget to the sorting things out
thing. You got any other goodones in there that were gnarly?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Okay. Like , gimme a few more.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I'll give you some context on this one. Yeah . The
coach has been with us sincebefore I had been been a
member. So it must have been atthis point, eight years plus.
Mm-hmm
know, part-time coach pandemichits . I'm watching my
full-time coaches struggle tolive. Um, I'm doing everything
I can to help, but at thatpoint I had a realization that
my full-time coaches need to betruly full-time. They needed
(03:38):
the opportunities to make areal full-time living. So if
anything ever happened again,they could, they could succeed
and make it through and havesome savings and everything
else. And I need to do a betterjob of offering those
opportunities. So coming outtathe pandemic, she's got all
sorts of personal politicalstuff. Her husband's a cop,
it's just an issue. There'sjust issues all over California
at the time and Yep . It's areally heightened , uh,
(04:01):
sociopolitical situation,environment in the gym. So
trying to navigate all thesethings and , um, I sat every
single coach down and I said,Hey, listen, you're part-time.
Here's something I want you towork on. Here's what I'm
working on. We're all gonnawork on these improvements as
we roll the gym back out.
Mm-hmm
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Speaker 2 (04:21):
What I can guarantee you is as the full-timers get
settled, you'll have classesagain. But until we're back to
a full schedule, full-timersare getting priority. Mm-hmm
one coach. Oh, they want me towork on anatomy. They don't
think I know what I'm talkingabout. They don't think I'm
good enough.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Oh. You know , didn't
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Take feedback. Know I just serve classes. Mm-hmm
here longer. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Right . That's a tough spot. 'cause like the
pandemic caused , you had tomake hard decisions. Right .
And you're doing this to tryand preserve what you can
because of all the restrictionsand all the chaos going on. And
now you're stuck with thisperson who's just pushing back.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Right. And I know they had a lot of personal
issues going on mm-hmm
lot of that came to fruition. Ithink she was ready for a
change in terms of her ownfitness and what she was doing.
And this was just a great out.
Um, and something I'll pointout, if you've ever been there
or if you haven't been there,you're gonna be there no matter
what. Even in a positive exit,if they want to, you are gonna
(05:22):
be the villain every time. Yeah. If they feel uncomfortable
telling people the real reasonthey left, I got a better job.
I needed a change in my fitnessenvironment, I just wasn't
getting enough hours. Whateverit is, generally speaking,
they're not gonna be willing,if they're uncomfortable saying
that, they're just gonna throwit on you. He's, he's an a-hole
(05:44):
turned his back on me, you know, whatever it takes to get the
spotlight off them.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
So did that , that happened. Oh yeah . That's
essentially what happened. Andyou hear that a lot with people
where coaches for whateverreason have to be let go or
they choose to go and then theyjust leave these like Kool-Aid
man gaping burning holes in thewall on their way out. Right.
And it , it's, it's bad.
Anything else in the, in thetickle trunk?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Oh, yeah. Um, so , uh, let's getting started. I
had a , I had a GM a coupleyears ago who was going through
her own issues again, seems tobe the common theme mm-hmm
awards and she felt shedeserved the spotlight for
(06:27):
those awards. So I got sat downand told, don't des you don't
deserve those. The spotlightshould be on me and the staff
and like, you should bethanking me. And I'm like, the
award is for staff development.
Mm-hmm
It's an award I got because Iput the money and time into
developing you guys and givingyou these opportunities. So I'm
not sure how that is a staffaward mm-hmm
(06:51):
an award for someone that isliterally getting thousands of
dollars in development everymonth. You have your own
mentor, you have, you go tothings like the two brain
summit, you go to other summitsfor other parts of the
industry. Like, I'm not surewhere that, where this is
coming from. Fast forward abouta year, my goal with my GMs is
always, this is a steppingstone for you. Mm-hmm
(07:13):
to three years you should beputting your resume out there,
seeing what you're worth. Andfor a lot of them, at least two
out of the three I've had,they've stepped up to six
figure incomes Wow . When theydo that. So for me, I'm always
telling them, put your resumeout there at around two years.
Start putting your resume outthere. I know I can't give you
(07:36):
a hundred thousand dollars ayear. Just the job does not
require that. And its skilllevel isn't there, but your,
your resume is going to speakto someone that can do a six
figure income job. So did that,gave the notice. Apparently I
wasn't upset enough about herleaving
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Speaker 2 (07:59):
And having developed my personal assistant to become
a leader in the company. I hadan immediate segue . Yeah. So
it wasn't this long drawn out.
I don't know what we're gonnado. I don't know how we'll
replace you. Just publicfireworks.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Oh
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Okay . So that's, that's three of your many
stories of, of yeah . Justnegative stuff. And listeners,
you probably have your ownstories out there or you've
heard of stuff. I have heard somuch stuff when I put this
post-op asking , uh, who's inin our tinker group who's dealt
with staffing problems. We gota bunch of crazy stuff in
there. Everyone's dealt withit. You are not alone. You're
not the only person. Our mostsuccessful gym owners, that's
(08:40):
the tinkerers. They are, youknow, millionaire gym owners
essentially running veryprofitable enterprises. They've
all dealt with staffing issues.
It is part of the game. HR is adifficult, difficult thing. So
you are not alone. And we'regonna talk about some solutions
for some of this stuff. Chris,talk to me about like, when you
were going through these toughtimes, how did you feel about
your business? And then how didthese problems affect clients?
(09:00):
Because let's really talk wherethe rubber meets the road
because the client Yeah . Theclients have to be happy. And
if they're not, you got an evenbigger problem than staff
problems.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
What I have found countless times the , I
mentioned the three, I'veprobably had at least 20 other
member or other, you know, egosituations. What I've come to
find is people are , um, what Icall front page news chasers.
Hmm . They want the headline ofthe day. That headline is going
to last a week, two weeks topsbefore a new headline hits the
(09:33):
world. And they're all runningto flock to gaw at that new
thing. Mm-hmm
And you know, I always use thisexample because I , it just
blew me away. We'd be in aCrossFit owner Facebook group
and a guy would get caughtdoing something very pervy with
cameras and whatever, and thatthat comment section would
(09:53):
flood for about eight daysuntil the new drama hits the po
hits the group. Yeah . Silence.
Yeah . And this guy'scompletely forgotten about. Huh
. So to me, there's really nothing that you can do, even if
you were in completely in thewrong. There is nothing unless
it's something super egregiousand like what that guy did with
(10:13):
the bathrooms and the camera .
It's like, if it's nothingegregious, if it's just simple
human error or maybe emotion'sgot the best of you, or they're
just in their own feels andmaking you out to be a monster,
you just gotta weather it for alittle bit and that next
headline's gonna hit and thenthis is gonna be forgotten
about. It's old news.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah. That's good advice. And I, I didn't deal
with like really horrible staff, people exiting and so forth,
but I did deal with changes andit , it was hard because there
were people that were veryclosely tied into the fabric of
the business and I was justterrified that when they leave,
everyone would leave. And so,you know, listeners, if you're
out there, time heals allwounds and it's not gonna be
bad as you think You have to,you know, Chris Cooper has one
(10:53):
that he says, if , uh, the onlyway out is through and you just
have to kind of weather thestorm, the best thing you can
do is keep moving forward andrealize that like the staff,
people are not your business.
They can be a huge part of yourbusiness and it's on you as the
owner to develop them and makethem part of that. But if you
do have to make a change forthe benefit of the business and
your clients, you have to dothat and keep pushing through.
Let's talk a little bit aboutthat. Uh, you know, you talk
(11:16):
about being a new gym owner andso forth, you know , what was
the first step to solving thesestaffing problems and how did
you find the courage to takeit? Because it is hard. HR is
not at my alley. I strugglewith it. Many people do.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So first thing I did when I bought the gym was I
realized everybody was beingpaid the same regardless of
their scale , leveler,certification level, education,
et cetera. So I created atiered system. I borrowed one
from Jason Kpa . Mm-hmm
through the doldrums of theFacebook groups and mm-hmm
compiled my own version. Sopeople had a , had a ladder of
(11:48):
achievement. They didn't feellike, all right , now I'm a
coach. That's it. There's nomore, I can't grow. There's no
reason to get better. I, thefirst thing I instilled was we
have a growth mindset here.
Everybody should be constantlygrowing. I offer continuing
education credit up to athousand dollars for my top
tier coaches, because if you'reat that level, you're , your
education is much like you'regoing to really high level
(12:10):
certs mm-hmm
wanna make sure they feel likeit's valuable to do. And , um,
that really helped. It, it kindof flushed out those people
that were happy to just be herewith a free membership and like
work out with their friendsbecause they just end up
working out in class if therewas all their friends and
mm-hmm
(12:30):
amateur belief system andallowed us to bring in a fresh
wave of professionals thatclearly did not fully separate
itself until after thepandemic.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
So . So would it be fair to say that systemizing
and professionalizing yourbusiness was the first step to
starting to solve staffproblems?
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah. Not to say to the old owners to give them
credit. It was veryprofessionalized. Yeah . There
was just certain parts of theHR that needed work and
elevation, because I could seethat people were very much in
that like cruise control mode.
Mm-hmm
There was no need to improve,there was no need to
professionalize because themoney's never getting better.
(13:10):
It's never gonna change myworth. It's never gonna change
what's expected of me.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
When you bought the business, were there documented
roles, responsibilities, andcontracts and everything?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
There was some expect expectations and basic
guidelines, but when I createdthat tiered system, I was able
to elevate that and make itmore specific based on your
role, based on, you know,you're a level one CrossFit
coach, you want to get paidmore, you have a couple
options, you can go get yourCrossFit level two, or you can
coach X amount of classes aweek, elevate the amount of
(13:40):
classes you coach. 'cause nowyou're, you're increasing the
value of your time becauseyou're helping me make sure I'm
not constantly scrambling tocover.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Mm-hmm
real work after that to startlooking at like roles and
responsibilities and like,clearly making adjustments
there? And , and then the otherquestion after that, so you've
done that. How did you, did youput in like staff evaluations
and a regular schedule, thatkind of thing?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
You know , I wish I would've mm-hmm
Um , not until I got with TwoBrain did I realize how
important that stuff is as abunch of very much a visionary,
like 95, 98 on the visionaryscale. I think it's , uh, the
integrator, visionary scale.
Like I'm Ming the nineties andmm-hmm
up in the nineties as anoperator. So we balance each
other out. I'm generally up inthe cloud. So, you know, things
(14:24):
like reviews and, you know,consistent coaching and
consistent management wasn't inmy toolbox until I went out and
got mentors to help me, youknow, realize these things are
important.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Well, let's dig into that. And that's like, how does
a mentor fit into this plan?
Because again, you came intothis, you bought this business,
you had to sort out some stuffthat was gnarly. And I, I
started, I didn't do that. Ididn't buy it . I started one,
but I didn't know anything. Ididn't have no clue what I was
doing. I could teach a squatand that was about it. And I
got into myself into trouble aswell. So where does a mentor
come in and how does that helpyou then solve and prevent
(14:59):
staff problems and createcareers?
Speaker 2 (15:01):
I think it's a lot about finding someone that's
carved a path you're trying towalk. Hmm . So if you're
walking through the jungle,which is essentially what it is
when you're starting or buyinga business that isn't
professionalized to that level,you are walking through the
jungle and just kind ofmacheing your way through. Not
really sure if you're going inthe right direction, if you've
(15:22):
been going in circles, ifyou're going backwards, you
have no idea. Mm-hmm
walking completely blind. Whenyou get a mentor, they kind of
pull the foliage up and go,Hey, look at this path that's
already been carved. Why don'tyou go this way? And then you
get ,
Speaker 1 (15:37):
It's way easier and shorter. Yeah .
Speaker 2 (15:38):
You go , you go these forks in the road and
they go, well, you could gothat way and I support you if
you do, but I would recommendexploring this path and here's
why. 'cause here's what I'veseen during my years and how I
got to where I'm at. Mm-hmm
lot of just, it's, it's a lotof guidance. It's , uh, I
always say the, the mentor isthe guide and the, the mentee
(15:59):
is the hero. So their job isjust to kind of guide you along
the path and make sure thatyou're supported. And you know,
when you are stressing outbecause an employee decided to
run your name through the mudand try to wreck your, your
image in town, they're there tolisten and allow you to vent.
Or when I might have told mymentor that I'm glad I have a
lot of firefighters here 'causeI'm ready to burn this place to
(16:21):
the ground. You know, it's ,uh, it , it's good to have
someone that can go, yeah, it'sa good idea, but why don't we
try maybe going for a 30 minutewalk and then see if you still
want to burn it to the ground.
Ah , it's a good idea. I'll go. You know, so sometimes it's
little things , sometimes it'sbigger, like, hey, we need to
completely change your , uh,pricing and delivery of your
(16:41):
sales.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah. And it can be as simple as, and here's a
common one. You can trade amembership for part-time
coaching, or you can documentroles and responsibilities and
create a fair hourly rate thatthen you pay to those coaches
and you build this into yourprofit and loss statement so
that these costs are accountedfor in a very clear way. So at
some point, if you wannaoffload more of the roles or
(17:05):
the coaches, the classes thatyou coach as the owner, you can
do that because you know theprice and these costs are built
in stuff like that where you,you know, 'cause I ran into
problems with that where I , Ihired all my friends at the
beginning. It's like, these arethe best people, you know ,
take senator across with levelone. And they, they turned out,
they were great coaches, butthey only coach say eight
classes a month or somethinglike that. Which isn't a bad
thing, but it's not, you can't,it's hard to build a business
(17:27):
without a stable presence ofstaff. That was me originally,
but I couldn't handle thevolume of that. So I had to
start pushing stuff outelsewhere. And I didn't know
how to do it. I also didn'thave the funds to do it because
everything was traded for freemembership. I had my, you know,
I didn't pay myself. It was adisaster. So a mentor can help
you see these things right awayand say, wait a second, we
gonna , we have to take a hardlook at this, this and make
(17:49):
sure that we take the rightsteps so that you end up in the
right spot. A big part of itfor me also was contracts and
roles and responsibilitieslisted out. 'cause you, you
were good. You had that before.
I did. I didn't have that stuffand it was just like, coach a
class, be good at it. Andluckily my coaches happened to
be pretty good at it and itworked out okay. But there was
no formal, you know , SOPs,procedures and things got a
(18:10):
little weird at times becausepeople would create their own
adventures. And once Isystemized things and said,
this is the staff playbook,this is the way it goes, things
went much, much better becausepeople were on the same page
and it allowed you to hirebetter. That's a question I'll
ask you because you have yourbusiness more or less
systemized and you have thesethings down. Is it much easier
to hire and find new people andbring them in?
Speaker 2 (18:30):
You know, I think with coaching it, it's as
difficult if not more difficultthan ever. I think the pandemic
really changed the, theenvironment. A lot of coaches
switch careers. Yeah . So a lotof career coaches abandoned
this industry because honestlyas owners we were barely
getting by. So I'm sure a lotof professional coaches felt
(18:50):
abandoned. Yeah. They felt likethe , these guys can't help me
now I gotta get to somewherethat can help me if something
like this happens again and Idon't blame them. Mm-hmm
more difficult to find thesedays. I think what we're, what
we're finding is hiring fromwithin and cultivating coaches
out of our membership are greatfor group. Mm-hmm
(19:13):
. I don't necessarily recommendthat if you're looking for
someone that's gonna do pt,semi-private, little higher
level , high ticket options.
But you know, in terms of agroup coach, they've got bit by
the bug of whatever you'redoing. They love what you do.
They have experienced what agreat class feels like. They
know what it is. Mm-hmm
(19:33):
to be taught how to do itthemselves, how to replicate
that. So mm-hmm
success hiring from within. Onecaveat to that is we've
realized even with benchcoaches, there's a lot of free
memberships if you're giving amembership as employment perks.
Mm-hmm
classes a month or a four hourshift a week. So they could be
(19:57):
an admin, they could go, theycould be the maintenance guy
and help us with fixing bikesand rowers and other things. If
that's something they're reallygood at. And they come in on
like a Sunday and they do that,but whatever it is, they're
doing some sort of four hourshift or coaching 10 hours a
month. Mm-hmm
That qualifies you for a freemembership, otherwise you're
still paying a membership andwe pay you to coach.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
So structure, you've got structure in place and
you've got a plan in place,which are two huge things. I'll
ask you this, how do youprevent your staffing issues?
You, I covered a lot of stuff,but I'm wondering if you have
any specifics of how youprevent staffing issues from
arising and what's your plan ifsomething does pop up, how are
you gonna roll out your fix?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
So we prevent, we've prevented a lot of things over
the years from edu fromcommunication. Mm-hmm
communication. But the numberone thing that I think everyone
struggles with, myselfincluded, is taking action when
it's a little tiny ember.
Right. It's a little tiny
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Ember .
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Put that , yep . Go walk up, have that what you
think is gonna be a reallydifficult conversation that
we've played out in our head tobe a massive issue. And it
generally turns out to be a ,oh my bad, I didn't even
realize I was doing that. I'llget that corrected. Thank you
for bringing it to my attentionand it's done and that EMS out.
Mm-hmm
catches a little bit of grass
(21:18):
tall yellow grass and thenyou've got this massive fire
mm-hmm
now pointing at each othergoing, well you didn't tell
that person to do that. Wellthat person does that wrong and
that per 'cause now you've gotthem on the defense 'cause you
are mm-hmm
from an aggressive standpointrather than a caring one. So
for me that's, that's thenumber one thing is take action
(21:39):
early, nip it in the butt asfast as possible.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah. And do you do that on the fly or do you have
standardized scheduled meetingswith coaches?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
We have standardized scheduled meetings, but at the
same time if something is goingawry, I don't have a problem
walking in and just going, Hey,I noticed you're not wearing a
CF T-shirt. Did you just forgetit? Is it right? Oh yeah. I
totally forgot it. I, I promiselike this is one time thing I ,
it won't happen again. Cool. Noproblem. They're aware, you're
(22:08):
aware. If it happens again,obviously it gets a little bit
more serious of a conversation.
But you know, sometimes it'sjust as simple as like letting
them know that you saw it andthem getting the chance to let
you know that they're awaremm-hmm
they care so there's no awkwardsilence or uneasy around each
other. 'cause you're both kindof afraid to broach the
(22:29):
subject.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I'll give you a shameful example from my own
past. We had a back door from aparking lot where I'm here ,
it's cold and crappy. Sothere's always like in winter
it's like dirt and muck andsalt and whatever and sand. So
people come in the back door ofthe coaches, they'd walk across
the training floor and turn offthe alarm and open the front
door and they would inevitablyleave these gigantic ugly
footprints and leave muddyboots in stupid places. And I
(22:52):
could not bring myself to stepon that ember. Instead I got
passive aggressive and I drewgiant chalk circles around the
feet and said, stop doing this.
And ridiculous stuff like that.
Just shameful. If I had justhad that conversation and said,
Hey man, take shoes off theback door or to the entire
staff, it would've been so muchbetter. But instead I let that
one sit , just sit. And I gotmadder and madder and
(23:13):
eventually it came out in oneof those everything ketchup
bottle things where I'm madabout this and this and this
and the shoes. Right. And it'sjust like, that's not a good
way to be a boss. And so ChrisCooper has talked about this
one, have these regularmeetings with your coaches and
Oscar Jo had one of our mentorsin Sweden gave another tip
saying tell them at everysingle meeting you'll give them
(23:33):
something to work on. Thatmeans that A, you don't have
meetings only when you're mad.
So people know they're coming,they know as soon like, Hey
Chris, let's have a meeting.
And you're like, oh God, nowwhat? You know, it's not one of
those, it's like it's regularscheduled programming,
everything's fine. And theyknow at that meeting they're
gonna get something to work on.
So you talked about that onecoach's like, oh everything's
fine. I don't need to work onanatomy or whatever. They know
(23:53):
you are getting some piece offeedback to make you better
because continual improvementis part of our mission here at
this gym. Something like that.
So there are two huge things.
Do you have regular staffmeetings, Chris?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
We have a quarterly all staff meetings. Everybody
comes together. Yep . We dolunch, we break things down. I
talk about the quarterly focusand then we're bringing back,
now that we have a new headcoach in place, we're bringing
back monthly coach meetings.
Nice. Where they'll do some,we'll have somebody come in and
do a development talk. So it'llbe like a special a talk. Like
(24:26):
we have a coach coming intomorrow , uh, or no SAT
Saturday that will discusssemi-private like programming,
retention. 'cause that's all hedoes over here at my, all at my
other gym. Altamont PerformanceLab . Mm-hmm
he's an expert on this. He'sbeen doing personal training
for 20 years. So he's gonnacome drop knowledge on our
CrossFit coaches who aren't ascomfortable with programming
(24:48):
for a private or semi-privatestrength focused client.
They're not as comfortable withhow do I retain someone and
keep the communication positiveand and fun for 60 minutes with
just one or four people versus15 mm-hmm
we're , we're starting thatcadence. Um , we do monthly
staff, non-mandatory staffdinner. So I will either take
(25:11):
them out to dinner somewherefun. I like that.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Or
Speaker 2 (25:14):
I'll host a dinner at my house. Like I , I love to
barbecue so I'll host 'em atthe house. One of my other
staff just bought a cool housewith a party backyard. So she's
inviting them all over herhouse for one Yeah . In July.
So yeah, we try to do thatevery month.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
I like the non-mandatory part where it's
like, this is just a casualthing, you wanna come cool if
you can't, no worries. And, butit's a team building. I like
that a lot. Yep . Uh, and thenyou mentioned it before, I just
wanna confirm it. Careerindividual stuff. How often
does that happen or performancereviews?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Roadmaps are probably every 90 to a hundred
to six months depending onwhere they're at. We try to at
least get it twice a year. Forour newer staff, it's probably
every 90 days for the firstyear. Mm-hmm
Just to make sure that like, ifthey're improving rapidly or if
things aren't working, we cankind of, you know, the old
proverbial get 'em in the rightseat if they're in the wrong
seat. Yeah . 'cause a lot oftimes we have the right
(26:03):
personality that we just havethem in the wrong seat mm-hmm
and get that done quickly. Um,so we can keep these right
personalities and rightattitudes and just get 'em
somewhere where they're more,you know, functional.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So two to four times a year you're meeting with the
coaches and does that includeevaluations in there as well?
Or is that something you doseparately?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
So evaluations , uh, we do form , we're planning
formal evaluations every sixmonths for a year. Yep . Okay .
And then , um, I think my headcoach said she's gonna do
informal monthly. So justpoking in, giving them some
feedback if they have somethingreally, really glaring that
they're working on, she's gonnabe more formal with her reviews
(26:45):
mm-hmm
rapidly. We also have a coachthat's the head of coaching
development. So if it'ssomething really glaring on the
coaching side, they'll go workwith him to specifically
improve mm-hmm
That part of their game. Butfor the most part, our coaches,
it's, it's a lot more of like,Hey, you're getting to people
two times a class, get to thema third time. Just be more
(27:06):
aware, be more mindful of yourtime management. Or maybe
they're afraid to cue theveteran people that are, can
lift more than them or maybeare they feel like have better
technique. And I always tell'em , there's always something
you can give them . Mm-hmm
foot's uh , a fraction of aninch ahead of your right. Go
ahead and clean that up.
(27:28):
know what's going on. They knowyou're trying to find something
and they appreciate it. Yeah .
Speaker 1 (27:31):
But what I see here from you is you have scheduled
stuff. So I've asked you like,when are you doing wit what,
and you've got an answer forall of that. But then you also
have someone whose job yourhead coach is, is to check on
things regularly. So there'salmost this, I mean, it's ,
it's not informal, but it's nota scheduled meeting, but it's
just like, hey, let's try thisor do things. So someone is
responsible for improving yourcoaches. Uh , two brand
(27:52):
listeners if you're a client,I've got some very exciting
stuff. Uh , Carlsberg and OscarJo Head are going to be talking
about Coach Ascension models atthe two brainin summit and
rolling out some very, veryexciting stuff available for
two Brainin clients. Uh, I'veseen these spreadsheets, they
are incredible. And it talksabout all the different ways
that you can evaluate anddevelop coaches to make careers
for them . This includes likehow to pay them more and how to
(28:14):
do these things. So if you'recoming to the two brain summit,
you are in for a real treat.
And I hope you guys will take alook at that talk as we close
this out. Chris, I'm gonna askyou this one. So gym owners are
out there. If they've clickedinto this show, they're
probably because they're have astressful problem on their
hands right now. How can a gymowner who's dealing with a
staffing problem today startsolving it right away after she
stops listening to this show ?
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Prioritize the importance of that situation.
So for us, naturally, we'regoing to put the most , um,
intimidating conversations atthe bottom of the list and try
to hide them and bury them asfar down as you can go.
. Yeah. But realistically, youshould be starting with the
(28:55):
hardest conversations at thetop of your list. Because a lot
of times those are the onesthat are causing 80% of your
problems is
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Rip the bandaid off, eh,
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Right? Mm-hmm
rip the bandaid off, you mightfind it's a festering wound
that's literally causing all ofyour problems and getting this
one thing done all of a suddenalleviates 80, 90% of your
stress about all these thingson your list. And you realize,
oh, I've just got a couple realeasy conversations left. Mm-hmm
(29:24):
kind of just put our blinderson and, you know, hope for the
best with these things.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yeah. And if you're like me, if you, if you're
avoiding something and you'reputting stuff in front of that,
you're not giving your fullattention to the stuff you
should be focusing on becauseit's just solely there to get
in the way of the stuff youshould be doing. Uh , are you
very direct, like when you talkto, to someone, staff members
now , uh, does that get easier?
Like if it , is it easier tostep on that ember and just
say, Hey dude, this is wrong.
Can you fix that? Or is itstill that squidgy, ah , I
(29:48):
gotta work yourself up for it?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
So it's a little bit of both. I'm fortunate that I
have a management layer inbetween. So I don't have a lot
of these like simpleconversations anymore. Mm-hmm
as much as I used to be. Nice.
But when it comes down to likehigher level conversations or
even I have to have theseconversations with my
management team, right? Right .
Your management team is notyou. They're not perfect. You
(30:11):
are not perfect. These samethings, I still have to manage
them and I still have to belike, on top of things that I
can't allow to slide. Like,hey, communication's not where
it needs to be. I'm noticingtexts are falling through. What
can we do to systemize this andfix it? Or what was the most
recent one? I think we werejust having some issues with
billing and things fallingthrough the cracks and hey, are
(30:32):
we calling these people? Whatare we doing? A lot of times
it's just a question if youframe it as a question rather
than a, Hey, you're doing this,it's a, hey, this is going on,
what do you think? Is theresomething we can do to get
better?
Speaker 1 (30:43):
That's a good one.
That's much lessconfrontational. Right?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
You , if you approach it from a care versus
confrontation standpoint,you're gonna get a completely
different response. You're notgonna put them on the
defensive, you're not gonna putthem in a position of like all
of a sudden they're in fight orflight. They're thinking I'm
about to get fired. Like thisis gonna go terrible 'cause
they think the same way you do.
We're all human, we all go tothe immediate worst case
(31:08):
scenario. So if you're puttingthem in that confrontational
space, they're immediatelygoing, I'm about to get fired,
so screw it, I'm gonna let 'emhave it
Speaker 1 (31:15):
holes burned in the , on theway out and so forth. Uh, so I
I , I think the best plan herefor listeners is if you've got
a stabbing problem right now,address it head on , get it out
of your way so you can get backto growing your business. If
you're struggling with thatbadly, I'd encourage you to use
the link in the show notes,book a call and talk to , to
(31:35):
brain mentor about it. That'sit . What you do there is
you're going to get, everythingin your business is gonna get
analyzed, including staffingproblems. And a mentor can show
you, as Chris said, this is thepath I think we should take.
Here are your options. The ,this is the probably the
preferred one if we go thisroute. This is how you do it.
It's a step-by-step plan thathelps you systemize your
business, get the right peoplein the right seats, and then
(31:57):
help them improve throughmentorship because you will
become mentor to your staff andthen build a business where
coaches have great careers andget great results for clients.
It's a whole system. Christy ,it worked for you, correct?
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah. Our revenue's through theroof. I have the right team in
place. I am almost completelyremoved from both of the
businesses. So I'm living thedream and a
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Lot of , and this is after coming in right now
coming , yeah. And this isafter coming in with , uh,
fires to put out immediately asan owner
Thanks so much for being here,Chris. I appreciate your time
and sharing your , your warstories and your solutions with
gym owners.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
My pleasure. Happy to help Mike. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
That was Chris Williams. This is Run a
Profitable Gym . Thanks so muchfor listening. Please hit
subscribe on the way out withmy thanks. And now here's to
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Rain founder Chris Cooper with a final message for
you. Hey, it's Tub Brainfounder Chris Cooper. With a
quick note , we created the GymOwners United Facebook group to
help you run a profitable gym.
Thousands of gym owners, justlike you have already joined in
the group. We share soundadvice about the business of
fitness. Every day I answerquestions, I run free webinars
(32:59):
and I give away all kinds ofgreat resources to help you
grow your gym. I'd love to haveyou in that group. It's Gym
Owners United on Facebook, orgo to gym owners united.com to
join. Do it today.
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