This article is the fourth installment of a roundtable discussion we had with 14 coaches and gym owners at the JAM U Coaches Conference in June 2010. In this segment, we talk about the division of the workload at the gym.
Fourteen coaches from eight North American gyms discuss the inner workings of their facilities.
CBN: How do you make sure you’re not overworking yourself while still maintaining the quality of your programs?
Kimberly Dickenson: I try to get everything in, but sometimes I think I’m never going to make it when I work those 15-hour days. You have to put in those days of giving birth [to your business]. It does get better, though, and the parents adjust.
Darlene Fanning: And then your baby grows up.
Ali Moffatt: Alana [Potter] and I split our time evenly down the center. So we’re partners. We have a really strong partnership, and when she’s in the gym coaching, I’m not. That’s my time away from the gym, when I can have a life. Whenever there’s a team in the gym, one of us is there and that’s how we manage it. We’ve found that our athletes want to be coached, and they want to be coached by us. It’s not just coaching the kids, though. You have to coach the coaches so they buy into it all and have the loyalty, and then they’ll transfer all those skills to the kids directly from you. So even if you don’t have contact with that team personally, you have so much contact with their coach that they’re getting you through to the athletes.
Sean Sutton: You’ve got to make sure your best coaches are on those teams full-time; that the parents see they’re good coaches, that they’re quality. They may not own the gym, but they’re good at the program. They know what they’re talking about; they’re educated on safety levels and everything there is to know about that team. We make sure our coaches know it all, so that as soon as we step away, the parents don’t ask why we’re not coaching the team. If you can give those coaches the opportunity to be in that main role while you’re still there, the parents, kids and everyone else will see that coach as a leader and role model. They’ll be able to be that person and you can start to step away a little. As soon as you get through those steps, the parents are perfectly fine with it, the kids don’t have a problem and everybody’s excited because they’re still progressing. They’re still getting what they need out of the program and you don’t have to do it all.
Fanning: And when you let those coaches take over, don’t ever stand up in front of these kids and try to tell them what to do. You have to do it subtly and act like it was their coach’s idea. When you’re there, you should be in the background. You need to let the kids see that person’s in charge.
Karen Brenner: And someone else can answer the phone, pay the bills, do the website—pretty much anything besides spotting double fulls and teaching Level 5. Any mom can order the uniforms, size the kids, all that little stuff. Get a desk diva and have an office staff. People call me and say, “I’m so sorry I didn’t pay my bill” and I’m like, “I didn’t even know about your bill.”
Anything else you can hand over to someone else to do is great. Elaine told us years ago, “You need someone at the desk and it can’t be you. It can’t be the owners.” That’s the best thing we ever did. We went through four assistants before finding the perfect person.
Tracy Talarico: She’ll call parents and say, “Do you want me to swipe your credit card?”
Brenner: She’ll know when someone wants a sports bra or something and will set it aside for them, because she knows they won’t drive down there that night. She’ll tell us she’s going to sell $400 worth of merchandise and she won’t leave until she does.
Moffatt: Our gym is really similar, and what’s so amazing about our [office assistant] is that she’s really good at being on the parents’ side. Although she’s really on our side—she works for us and she’s very loyal—she’s there for those parents. She plays such a good role in the gym that way. It’s not always about us being the bad guys, it’s about her really going to bat for us with those parents.
Alana Potter: And she can alert us of the parents in the viewing area. Sometimes there’s stuff going on in the viewing area and she’ll just take care of it.
Brenner: Our desk diva is the first one the kids see when they walk in the door. The parents see her, the kids see her—she’s just a part of the professional environment. She’s the face of All Star One. When athletes walk in, they’re welcomed into the gym, and when they leave, our staff stands at the door and says, “Good job.” Just like a Walmart greeter. If it’s good enough for Walmart to greet its customers when they walk in, it’s good enough for All Star One to. If the person at Walmart can say, “Thank you for coming” and “Have a nice day” before people leave, so can we. They’re your customers, your clients. Say hello to them when they walk in and say good-bye when they leave. If we don’t, our diva does. She’s thanking them for a payment or yelling at them to get their checkbooks.
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