A lot of gym owners have a soft spot for their staff. Understandably, they have staff who work hard, and they want to repay them with gifts, gratitude and signs of appreciation. Often, they will book a call or send me a message to tell me they want to give their staff a raise and they need help budgeting that in.
Usually there is one thing I find when I review their budgets though. The owner himself hasn’t taken a raise in a very long time. Sometimes the owner has never taken a raise at all. For whatever reason, we’re happy enough with our pay and believe our staff should continuously get raises, but never think to re-evaluate our own pay.
I have been there. The first 6 years of my business, I didn’t give myself a raise. If I had been in the corporate world, I would have received (at a minimum) a cost of living adjustment every couple years plus a raise for a job well done. But, as a gym owner, I got it in my head that if I gave myself a raise, I was simply selfish. I was putting myself above others.
That was until I went to hire another full-time staff member and my accountant started asking some serious questions. We had worked hard to budget that person’s pay, and there was a safe margin. So, to avoid any red flags with the IRS based on our business classification, she recommended we re-evaluate our own pay and start looking at regular raises for owners.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was not selfish at all by considering an owners’ raise. In fact, it’s important that you’re giving yourself and annual raise SO THAT YOU CAN take better care of your staff and give them raises when the time comes.
