It’s a vicious cycle, isn’t it. You work hard, you bring in new athletes, you hire more staff and then you’re still at a breakeven dollar. If our labor cost directly correlates to the number of athletes in our program, how do we possibly increase or profit?

Today, I want to answer that question. I see gym owners running ragged trying to make a few dollars here and there and frustrated when they see others profitable and thriving. If the thought of more athletes scares you because you’re working at your max limit right now, then you’re going to have to make changes in your business to continue to grow while earning more profit.

Here is how to do that.

  1. Figure out what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis that you can hand off to someone else. Right now you may think that person won’t do as good of a job as you, but you’d be surprised how much better someone can do when it’s their primary focus.
  2. Hand over repeating tasks. Maybe that’s daily cleaning, lesson plans or checking the voicemails. I find that giving someone else repeated tasks is easier to delegate as you only have to teach it once and then just hold them accountable. When you give away small tasks that change every day, it’s harder for someone to learn how to do it (you find that it takes as long to explain the task as it does to do it yourself.) 
  3. Use your newfound time to do things that earn you profit! Figure out the most profitable areas of your gym and spend some time on those. For me, that’s birthday parties. So, if I want to give my staff or myself a raise, buy new equipment, renovate my space, I need to make more profits. I can do that most easily if I focus on programs that are low-labor, high profit. So, we figured out how to book two birthday parties at the same time, and it’s working! I don’t have to turn parties away anymore because we’re fully booked, and we can earn greater profits than if I focused my time on a single event (though for some – events are the low-labor, high-profit activity, so don’t count those out either!)

The most important thing is that you’re delegating over some tasks and using that newfound time to do something extremely profitable. Someone once told me that if I was paying someone else $15/hr to take tasks off my plate, then my goal was to make 2.5x that hourly rate. That means I can’t sit and reply to emails during that time (I would have been doing that anyway some other time.) That does mean, I can spend that new hour focusing on social media marketing, planning a new event or working through logistical hurdles that have prevented us from growth in the past. Whatever I do though, I need to be hypothetically making $37.50/hr doing it.

So the moral is – don’t run yourself ragged doing daily tasks. Hire someone else. Train them. Pay them well. Hold them accountable. Use your newfound time to make 2.5x the amount you’re paying them.