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What I Learned From Spending a Day Inside Another Cheer Gym
Hey guys, and welcome to this episode of the Full Out Cheer Podcast. I’m Danielle, and I’m excited to be here with you today.
One of the benefits of working with a VIP or premiere coach through the NextGen Academy is that after a full year of working together — provided you’ve been consistent on your calls — we come to your gym and spend a day there in person. I recently did that with a gym about an hour and forty-five minutes from me, and even though I’ve worked with this owner every week for the past twelve months, I learned things by being in his gym that I never could have learned over a call.
No matter how much you talk to another gym owner, some things can only be learned by seeing them for yourself. There are so many great ways to network in this industry — conferences, the Cheerbiz Accelerator, joining the NextGen Academy — but it’s important not to assume you know how someone else’s gym actually operates until you’ve seen it firsthand. I always walk away from other gyms with something I can apply in my own. Here’s what I took away from this visit.
You Can Talk for Hundreds of Hours and Still Not See Everything
This gym owner and I have talked for dozens, maybe hundreds, of hours together. You can review someone’s numbers, dig into their systems, and get to know their staff — but there are things you’ll never truly understand until you’re physically in their building. Here’s what I learned.
Lesson One: You Don’t Know How Someone’s Time Is Really Spent
Until you physically see the day-to-day operations in someone else’s gym, you have no idea how their time is actually spent. It was fascinating to watch how this owner interacted with customers versus how he interacted with staff — two very different dynamics. I watched how he coached, what his staff did while he coached, and what happened when he stepped up to the front desk.
One example: one of his managers is genuinely capable — a true manager, not just someone with the title. She makes decisions, follows through, and knows things before the rest of the staff does. But she was burnt out, because her nightly responsibilities left no room for the bigger-picture work a manager should be doing.
By being in the gym, I noticed there was already a secondary staff member handling marketing and small tasks at the front desk while the manager ran the show. My suggestion: train that secondary person to become the primary front-desk lead at night, freeing the manager to walk the floor, spot overstaffed classes, catch retention risks, and talk to parents in the lobby instead of chasing them down by text after hours. A fresh set of eyes made it obvious — the fix was already sitting in the building.
You Can’t Judge Coaching Quality From the Outside
I also learned you don’t really know how good a coach is until you watch them work. I sat in on a gymnastics class this owner was teaching, and he was phenomenal — organized, firm but fun, constantly moving kids through drills that built directly toward new skills. But his newest employee, despite having a gymnastics background, had never trained alongside him. My advice: your best coaches should be the ones training your newest hires. This owner didn’t need to bring in an outside trainer for class management — he needed to train his own staff the way he already coaches.
I also noticed something simple but telling: in some classes, kids stood in line for four or five minutes waiting for their turn, while the owner’s own class ran like a well-oiled machine from start to finish. Little things like that add up to a parent’s experience of your gym.
Feedback Reveals a Growth Mindset — or a Fixed One
After I shared my recommendations with the owner and his manager, they brought them to the staff. Watching how each person responded to that feedback was its own lesson. Staff who said things like, “I understand what you’re asking — can I get more feedback in a couple weeks?” showed a growth mindset and the beginning of a strong culture. Staff who pushed back or got defensive signaled there’s culture work to do, not just logistics work.
It’s worth remembering: if you’re the kind of owner who invites a coach in to observe and critique your gym, you already have a growth mindset. That can actually make it harder when staff don’t share it — so pay attention to how your team receives feedback, not just what the feedback is.
Numbers Tell You There’s a Problem — Not What the Problem Is
This client has a large rec program, and rec programs naturally see more churn — kids come and go with the seasons, cycling through soccer, basketball, and t-ball. Over the past year, he’s done a great job lowering that churn. But numbers alone couldn’t tell me why certain areas still churned more than others.
Ninja programs tend to have higher churn than tumbling or cheer across almost every gym I’ve worked with, often because those kids are bouncing between other activities. Watching in person, I saw that the ninja coach had excellent emotional intelligence with kids — but his front desk staff had much stronger communication with parents. That told me the fix wasn’t a mystery program overhaul; it was either helping the coach connect better with parents, or adjusting the curriculum so families feel their kid is visibly progressing.
Numbers will tell you that you have a problem. They won’t tell you if it’s a coaching issue, a communication issue, or a relationship issue. Only observation can narrow that down.
Your Facility Is Always Telling a Story
This gym’s building was clean, well-branded, and smelled great — genuinely one of the best-kept facilities I’ve been in. I could tell it wasn’t staged for my visit: nobody acted surprised or out of the ordinary, which told me this level of care is just how they operate. Their online brand and their in-person reality matched, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.
It reminded me of something Dan, host of the Cheerbiz podcast, once told me about my own gym: everything matched our brand except our bathrooms, which still had the same dated tile from when we bought the building. I never would have picked that out myself — but a fresh set of eyes caught it immediately, and we’ve since fixed it.
Parents notice everything, especially when they’re new and quietly taking it all in rather than chatting with people they know. Every physical detail in your gym — how it’s cleaned, how it’s organized — either builds trust or erodes it.
Why We Built the Cheerbiz Accelerator
The biggest lesson wasn’t about any one gym — it’s that every business looks different from the inside than it does from the outside. Numbers tell part of the story, but being in the building tells you the rest: the culture, the relationships, the things nobody would ever say out loud on a call.
That’s exactly why we created the Cheerbiz Accelerator. It’s a two-day deep dive where you come to one of our gyms, get an in-depth tour of how we run things — our boards, our private lesson tracking, our camera setup, our music systems — and get direct feedback on your own program. This October, Dan and I are hosting an Accelerator at my gym in Warrensburg, Missouri, and in November we’re hosting one at Dan’s gym, Dream Teams, in Portland, Oregon.
If you have more than 60 athletes, you likely qualify to attend. Head to CheerbizAccelerator.com to book a call and see if it’s a fit.
Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of the Full Out Cheer Podcast. I had a great time at that gym, and I’d encourage you to get into other cheer gyms yourself, especially ones further along the path you’re trying to walk. I’ll catch you on the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like “Blind Spots & Business: Why You Can’t See Your Own Mistakes“
