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What to Do When a Coach Says They Want to Open Their Own Gym
In this episode, Cheer Biz Podcast host Dan Cotton shares both sides of the coach-turned-competitor story and offers a practical playbook for gym owners who want to keep their best people or part ways on good terms.
Why This Conversation Keeps Happening
Welcome to another episode of the Cheer Biz Podcast. I’m your host, Dan Cotton, and in this solo episode we are tackling one of the hardest moments a gym owner can face: the day a trusted coach, the person who has been your right hand, tells you they plan to leave and open their own gym. Dan explains that although this happens all the time, there are ways to soften the blow and even to avoid the situation altogether.
The topic came up because Dan has recently spoken with several gym owners whose staff members announced plans to start their own programs. Those owners described feelings of betrayal, frustration, hurt, and sadness. Other owners shared stories about what has been happening in their local markets: one coach leaves a gym and takes a group of athletes along, those athletes later follow another coach who splits off somewhere else, and the cycle trickles down until local gyms are cannibalizing one another. Each departing coach believes they can do it better, and the result is a contentious environment for everyone involved.
Dan sets expectations for the episode. Part of it is simply his thoughts on the realities of how this plays out, and part of it is a set of actionable steps owners can use, both to respond when a coach delivers this news and to reduce the odds of having that conversation at all.
Seeing It From the Coach’s Side
Dan is quick to say that he understands the coach’s point of view because he has lived it. Before he and his wife, Tori, took over their gym, Tori served as the previous owner’s administrative assistant and ran the day-to-day operations, while Dan worked as one of the gym’s high-level coaches. The owner was already on his way out, pouring his energy into another business and openly voicing that he no longer wanted to deal with the gym. Dan and Tori looked at everything they had been frustrated by and decided they could do it better and do it their way.
Experience has since taught him two lessons. First, you might well be able to do it better. Second, it is never as easy as you think it is. Dan says there are twenty-two thousand whys behind most decisions, and coaches who are not in the day-to-day simply cannot see all of them. He draws a parallel from his time in the police department, where he once imagined all the changes he would make as range master, only to discover the budget he had to respect and the long chain of command above him, from sergeant to lieutenant to captain to deputy chief to chief.
Coaches are the boots on the ground, and they genuinely see friction points that owners may miss. Dan’s counterpoint is a simple question: have you raised it with your owner and asked why that one thing can’t be fixed? Sometimes the owner has a good answer, and sometimes the owner didn’t even know it was a problem. Dan also acknowledges the human side. It is wonderful to be a coach at sixteen, eighteen, twenty-two, or even twenty-six, but eventually people want to know what is next in life beyond coaching a team or a class. Some coaches are happy as lifetime coaches, and owners love them for it, but others start craving progress.
The Owner’s Investment Runs Deep
On the flip side, Dan describes what many coaches never fully see. During the first five to ten years of a gym’s life, owners often hire people they cannot comfortably afford. An owner might be working roughly seventy-five hours a week and paying themselves around two thousand dollars a month, while hiring a coach whose hourly rate is double, triple, or quadruple the owner’s own.
There is an emotional investment as well. A gym is essentially the owner’s baby, and bringing in an employee means trusting that child to someone else. Because most gyms are small, family-style businesses, owners tend to know their employees well. Often the people closest to the owner, those in the highest positions and meeting with the owner regularly, are the ones who eventually say they are ready to move on and open something of their own, sometimes in direct competition.
Dan reframes how owners should take that news. Someone telling you they want to open a business should not be viewed as a betrayal. If anything, it is a compliment: you showed them that entrepreneurship can be rewarding and validating, and you built them up to the point that they believe they can do it themselves. That should be a feather in your cap. It is also normal to think they have no idea what they are getting into, and Dan sees nothing wrong with being open and honest with them about that. The feelings come with the territory.
Keep Them in the Family
Dan lays out his framework for the moment a coach delivers the news. The first question an owner must answer is whether this is someone they truly want to keep, not as a friend, but from a business perspective. If the answer is yes, ask the coach what it would take for them not to remove themselves from your company entirely. Some will say nothing can be done because they want to captain their own ship, and for those people a different path applies.
If there is room to negotiate, Dan suggests several options. An equity stake is the one many owners jump to first, but he urges caution and says it requires strong legal terms. A second location is another possibility, keeping the coach within the brand and the family. Another is a structure in which the owner retains a minority ownership stake, around twenty percent for example, in the new business while the coach runs it with the owner’s support. Dan points to his own experience: his gym recently opened its first franchise with two franchisees, Jesse and Tommy. Jesse had worked for the gym, left, and later approached Dan, saying, in his own words, that Dan would never franchise ODT. Dan had never said that, and the conversation that followed produced a partnership. Because they operate under the ODT brand and tap the gym’s resources, they are set up for far more success than a typical fresh gym.
Timeline is the next question to ask. Dan once told an employee who wanted to open a gym to stay for three more years and learn what being an owner really involves. Two weeks before recording, she told him she no longer thought she wanted to be a gym owner, because she enjoyed the mat side of cheerleading far more than the business side. At nineteen, her mindset will keep ebbing and flowing. The takeaway is that an owner can offer mentorship, essentially a cheer college where they teach the coach how to run a successful gym, or can offer to build a second location together.
When a Clean Break Is Best
If none of those options work, or if the coach is someone the owner has quietly been waiting to see leave, Dan says to part ways graciously, wish them well, and maintain a good relationship. He then shares an opinion he expects will draw some pushback. If a coach announces plans to open a competing gym within fifty to one hundred miles and wants no affiliation with you, that is the time to separate almost right away. A coach who is moving to another state next year is a different matter, and there is little reason to rush.
His reasoning is that no one can have one foot in and one foot out. An employee cannot represent your brand while building their own, and even the most ethical people will eventually face a moment when they must choose which business gets their effort. Almost every time, they will choose the one they are starting. A clean break lets both sides leave on good terms, and the owner might choose to pay the coach for a month or some other period, depending on timing, with legal considerations kept in mind.
Dan stresses that he is not encouraging coaches to be dishonest. If a coach has already begun negotiating rent, designing uniforms, or putting together a pricing packet, the moral and ethical move is to tell the owner that this is no longer an idea but a real plan. If the owner decides it is not a good fit to continue, the coach has done everything the right way.
Build a Real Career Path
The most important part of the episode, Dan says, is what owners do before this conversation ever happens. When someone says they want to open their own gym, what they are usually saying is that they are dissatisfied with their current position. Dan believes anyone can learn to be an entrepreneur, but some people are built for it and most are not. He recalls days when a parent emailed to say a coach was rude to their child and he was a sobbing mess in his office, and notes that he gets twenty such emails on some days. The stress is even worse for a brand-new gym, and Dan is fortunate to have infrastructure and layers that slow those messages from reaching him.
So he asks every owner to examine their career path. Can someone build a true career at your facility? Can they earn a full-time salary, have health benefits, and have retirement benefits? Can the gym become something they dedicate their life to, bringing reward to their family and their well-being? If the answer is no, owners cannot be surprised when talented people decide it is time to go, because there is an expiration date on any role that offers no way to level up. Highly capable people will find other positions where they can be highly capable, whether or not that means starting a gym.
Dan adds that most coaches do not even want to own the business. They want ownership of something within it, such as a program, marketing, or the front of house, an area they can build and create and be rewarded for with a raise or other recognition. Developing your people and showing them they can own a position is the best protection an owner has.
Why People Leave and Final Thoughts
Dan closes with a candid prediction. If you own a cheer gym and stay open long enough, this will happen to you. Every gym owner he knows has had an employee leave to start their own program, join another program, or take another job entirely. Ultimately, he says, people do not leave positions they are happy in, which is why the number one takeaway is to build that career path.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Cheer Biz Podcast. If you have questions or need anything, reach out, and consider signing up for one of the Cheer Biz Accelerator events. Dan notes that the 2026 events are sold out, with the next one coming up the following week and twelve motivated gyms attending, and he would love to meet you in person at a future one. You can also explore the AI for cheer gym owners lab at school.com to learn how Dan and Danielle use AI to take tasks off their plates. Be sure to join both Next Gen Facebook groups, Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners, and we will catch you on the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like “Increasing Staff Loyalty”
