R and R

By Ken Andrukow, TwoBrain Mentor
 
Defining the roles and responsibilities of your staff is a critical piece of building a business that can run without your presence.

I’m going to be honest with you: this isn’t a fun project. But, it might be the most important thing you ever do if you plan to be a successful business owner.
If you haven’t seen it, you should watch the movie The Founder. In a nutshell, it’s about the rise of McDonalds from a single restaurant into the empire that it is today. The success of McDonalds was based on the “Speedee Service System,” which broke all of the elements of making a hamburger into simple steps and assigned one simple task to each employee.
Every employee knew the part they had to play in executing the mission, which was to deliver a perfect hamburger in 45 seconds. McDonalds grew from one restaurant in 1955 to 5000 restaurants by 1978. Without the “Speedee Service System,” that growth would not have been possible.
McDonald’s isn’t paleo, but there’s a lot to be learned from their approach to employee training. As you grow your business, you need to ensure that standards are met without you having your eyes on every single class and sale.
As you, the owner, move up in value you will need to devote time to higher value activities: networking, sales, management of employees, and hopefully also some time away from the gym. You need to make sure your employees are able to consistently perform the tasks you used to do.
“Scaling up” means creating freedom for yourself, but many owners  find the quality of their members’ experience declines when they aren’t present.
This isn’t a problem with your coaches. It’s a problem with how you communicate with your coaches.
People aren’t mind readers. If you want a class to go a certain way, you need to take the time to write down the process from start to finish, in detail, and give your coaches the opportunity to be successful by following the plan. Keep it as simple as possible, and as specific as possible. Don’t assume anything.
You need to do this for all of the roles and responsibilities in your gym: Social Media. Joy Girl. General Manager. Cleaner. Everyone needs to have specific and measurable responsibilities so that they can be successful at their job, and so that you can move up to higher value activities like growing your business.
Not everyone is an entrepreneur or a “self-starter,” and that’s fine. Odds are if you’re the owner, you’re more of a self-starter personality who is good at identifying tasks and getting them done. Your staff may not share the same qualities, and they don’t have to. What they need is clear communication from you and a step-by-step process to follow.
If you find yourself frustrated by an inconsistent member experience in your gym, or having the same conversations with staff, or with people not executing your vision of how things should be done, ask yourself: have I taken the time to write down every step that it takes to be successful in their job? If not, go and do it now.
The hard part of this task is just getting started. In our Incubator, you’ll get templates and the accountability from mentors like Ken to make sure you do.
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One more thing!

Did you know gym owners can earn $100,000 a year with no more than 150 clients? We wrote a guide showing you exactly how.