How to hire your first team member for your gym or studio

Are you ready to hire?

Most owners of a small gym or studio wear every hat: coach, receptionist, salesperson, marketer, bookkeeper, cleaner and IT department. That works for a while. Then things start slipping.

Enquiries wait a day for a reply. No-shows don't get a call. The marketing happens in bursts. Your own training, your family and your days off are the first things to go.

You're probably ready to hire when:

• Your week is full, and the jobs that grow the business keep getting pushed back.
• Your prices leave a healthy margin, so you can pay someone and still make a profit. If they don't, fix your pricing first.
• You've written down how things are done, even roughly, so someone else can learn it.

If the last two aren't in place yet, start with how to grow a fitness studio, which covers pricing and writing your manual.

What stops most owners

When I ask owners why they haven't hired yet, the same four reasons come up. They're usually fears more than facts.

• "I can't afford it." Start small: a few hours a week. If those hours free you to sell, coach or market, the hire should pay for itself.
• "I don't have time to train anyone." That's the trap. Without help, you'll never have the time. A few hours of training now buys back hours every week for years.
• "I'm better at it." Probably, at first. They don't need to match you on day one. They need to do the job well enough, and get better.
• "Nobody will care as much as I do." Not at the start. People come to care when they're trusted, trained and given a reason to stay.

Who to hire first

Most owners assume their first hire should be a coach. Often, it shouldn't.

The jobs that slip first are usually admin: replying to enquiries, booking trials, chasing payments, following up no-shows and keeping the timetable and software up to date. Those are also the jobs that quietly cost you members.

Admin is usually the easiest work to hand over, because it can be written down step by step. It frees your best hours for coaching and selling, which are harder to hand over.

• Hire admin help first if messages, bookings and follow-up are slipping, or you spend evenings at the laptop. Part-time help, in person or a remote virtual assistant, is often enough.
• Hire a coach first if your sessions are full and turning people away, and your admin already runs smoothly through your software.

Either way, start with the role that gives you back the most hours for the jobs only you can do.

Where to find the right person

Look inside your own community first, then outside it. Both can work.

• Your members. They already know your community and believe in what you do, and members often stay loyal for years. The catch: they may have less experience, and existing friendships with other members need handling with care.
• Your network. Ask other owners, coaches, physios and past colleagues who they'd recommend.
• Outside your community: job sites, social media, local colleges and fitness courses, and university sport science students. You'll often find more experience and fresh ideas, but they'll need time to understand how you do things.

For coaches, look for personality and a genuine love of fitness ahead of a long CV. Skills can be taught. Warmth and good values are much harder to teach.

Where you find someone matters less than how you choose them. That's down to your process.

A five-step hiring process

A simple process stops you hiring the first friendly face, and gives you several chances to spot a good fit or a poor one.

1. A short application. Ask for a few lines on why they want the role, not just a CV. Check they meet the basics in your job description.
2. A 15-minute phone or video call. How do they come across? Would you trust them with your members? Do their values match yours?
3. A real test. For admin: reply to three sample enquiries in writing. For a coach: run part of a session with you or a few willing members. Can they actually do the job?
4. A final interview in person. Are they the same person you met on the call? Do they understand where you want the business to go, and do they want to grow with it?
5. Decide the next day. Never hire on the spot, however good they seem. Sleep on it, check a reference, then decide.

Throughout, look for three things: values that match yours, someone who gets your vision, and a real interest in learning and improving.

Pay and paperwork

Before you advertise, work out what the role is worth and what you can afford.

• For admin, pay by the hour and start with a set number of hours a week. Add more as the business grows.
• For coaches, pay per session or per hour, and check each session still makes a healthy margin. As a rule of thumb, aim to keep at least 75% of what a session brings in after paying the coach.
• Employed or self-employed? The rules depend on how much control you have over how, when and where they work, and they differ between countries. Check with your accountant before you offer the job.

For example, if a small-group session brings in $240 and you pay the coach $40, you keep $200, about 83%. The margin calculator works this out for every type of session you run.

The first 90 days

Hiring is the easy part. What happens next decides whether they stay.

• Train from the job description. Turn each part of the role into a short checklist, so training is the same every time, and one day a team member can train the next.
• Show, then watch, then step back. They watch you do it, then do it with you watching, then do it alone, with a check-in afterwards.
• Introduce them properly. Tell members who they are and why you hired them. Some members will miss you at first. Stand by your new team member and give members time to get to know them.
• Allow mistakes. Don't expect someone to learn in three weeks what took you three years. They won't do everything exactly your way, and that's fine if the result is right.
• Review at 30, 60 and 90 days. What's going well, what needs work, and what they'd like to learn next.

Managing and leading

Management is making sure the work gets done the right way. Leadership is helping the person doing it to grow. Your first team member needs both.

• Let them run the systems. Write down how each job is done, then manage the person to follow the system. When something goes wrong, ask whether it was the person or the system.
• Give them a few numbers to own, such as enquiries replied to within an hour or trial show-up rate. What gets measured gets managed.
• Meet every week, at the same time, even for 20 minutes. As the team grows, you'll spend more of your week in these meetings, and that's how it should be.
• Learn what drives them: how much they need to earn, what they enjoy, where they want to be in a few years.
• Map a path for them. More hours, leading a class, running a program, training the next hire. Without something to aim for, good people get bored and leave, sometimes taking members with them.

It's worth planning your team member's journey with the same care you give your members' journey.

Questions owners ask