I opened my gym in early 2013. By the fall of 2013, I had quit my full-time job and was working day in and day out at the gym. I was on Cloud 9. I was exhausted, but I assumed this is what it was supposed to be like every day. I was supposed to hustle. The bakers in the movies open the bakery to bake! I opened a gym to coach! But that’s not exactly what I was doing with all my time…
In fact, if you had asked me, I’m not really sure I could have told you what I was doing with all my time. I was there, and I was working hard, but the days flew by. Morning to night – I worked – all with a toddler at the gym and three more little kids at school. One day Angie (my business partner) and I decided to bite the bullet and buy an iPad for the gym so we could use it for credit cards, clocking in and fun cheer apps. In those days, spending money on a brand new iPad was a BIG investment. So, naturally when I got it, I added all the things.
One of those things was a fun clock in app so our coaches didn’t have to write their hours on their very own page of the gym notebook anymore. It was going to save me time doing math every two weeks, and I was thrilled. As soon as I set it up, I said, “Hey Angie, let’s test this out this week. Can we both clock in every day and make sure it’s good before staff starts using it?”
Of course she agreed. So, for the next five days, we clocked in and out. Late Thursday night before I went home, I wanted to check the admin side of the app. Angie and I had worked 88 hours in 5 days. That’s an average of 17 ½ hours per day. I knew we were getting very little sleep in those days, but I didn’t realize how little. I knew we weren’t spending much time with our families at home, but I didn’t realize I was missing out on being a mom (something I had always wanted) to be a gym owner (ALSO something I had always wanted).
I wish I could tell you we left for the weekend and got to really think about how to get out of the pickle we were in. I can’t tell you that though…because we were back the next morning to work Daytime Playtime and then back again the next night to work Family Fun Night, and then Saturday morning classes and two birthday parties.
Then Sunday would hit and the week would repeat itself. In those days, I had very little connections with other gym owners. Facebook wasn’t the information hub it is today. I didn’t quite know where to turn, so I got on Apple books and downloaded my first business book.
I didn’t love it at first. It was entertaining, but Grey’s Anatomy would have been better. I finished the book and started implementing some of the hiring procedures I had learned. I downloaded a second book. There, I learned that a few checklists around the gym might really help my micromanaging. I finished that book and downloaded a third. Time and time again, I would spend a few hours listening to a book and pick a few principles to implement. Sometimes there was so much that I had to take notes and other times, I’d get an idea or two and have to really get creative to figure out how it applied to my business.
Over time, we hired a part-time front desk staff. Then, we promoted her to front desk manager. A few months later, we offered her a full-time job. Slowly, we stepped out of some of the roles we had been filling. We hired someone to work birthday parties and started filling our spots on most recreational classes.
Then we gave key staff more responsibilities around the gym.
It’s been 10 years since I first clocked in. I work about 4 hours per week on my gym these days. I spend another 6 hours coaching teams because I missed it after a sabbatical in 2017-2019. Today, my joy in life is helping other gym owners recognize what they’re doing in their gyms and how they can find freedom to grow without eliminating their own freedom.
If I’m speaking to you right now – know that it doesn’t have to be like this forever. In fact, you are made for more than vacuuming every mat every day, and spending hours on your emails. You have staff who are made for more than what they’re doing right now too. Together, you can have a really amazing team that gets things done and then goes home to families who have missed you.
