Supporting Your Coaches Careers Will Grow Your Facility

All successful gyms across the community, no matter if they are Affiliated gyms, nonaffiliated, or traditional gyms, all have one thing in common. The employees LOVE working there. You will not find a profitable facility where the employees are not happy. If you have a high turnover in your coaches, or you’re are wanting to increase the value of your facility, read on.

Mentoring your coaches’ careers should be a priority.

In our community, “mentor” is a term that is thrown around so much the word itself has lost value. What you, as the gym owner should do is authentic, honest career mentoring.

Internal mentoring is common practice in almost every other industry, but it has never caught on in the fitness industry. Taking a proactive role in your employees can increase their happiness in their position, their joy with the facility, their productivity, and all of this will bring up your bottom line. When your coaches are happy and feeling fulfilled, their enjoyment of coaching will flow out to your clients and make them even more delighted at your facility as well.

Create your coach a program for success as you would create a program for a client.

Like fitness, a lot of business success comes from putting in the reps. As the owner of the facility, you want to have one on one time with each coach so you can nurture and discuss their career goals, what certifications they wish to earn, new classes they could create and coach to make both them and the facility more revenue, and you need to discuss the steps necessary to reach these goals. If you are in the early stages of your gym, this could be especially important to help them to buy into the dream to help the facility be more successful.

Schedule regular appointments with your coaches.

You want to schedule bi-weekly, or at the longest, monthly one on one meetings with each coach to discuss the above goals and to make sure they are taking steps to reach their goals. If they are not making progress, this is your opportunity to help them. Helping them to have a more fulfilling career is also helping yourself to have a more successful business.

These one-on-one sessions are also a fantastic time to give and receive feedback. If you think there is a way the coach can improve, this is the opportunity to tell them. If the coach has an idea that can help the gym be more profitable, they are more likely to say to you during these sessions instead of burying the thought.