There are two main groups of people that you want to love your fitness business. Those two groups are your customers and your employees. Of course, you want your customers to love your business. If they do, they will happily spend money with you and refer their family and friends. You want your employees to love your business because they are your representatives. If they are happy to work with you, then they are going to spread that attitude to your customers. If you feel like those two groups aren’t loving your business the way they should, this is the way to remedy it. Create your core values.
What are Core Values?
There are the two subgroups of a culture which include your people and your core values. Your core values are beliefs that are going to guide how people interact within your fitness business. If you do not have core values then these groups of people are not going to know how to be when they are in your physical location. Similar to how a country has a constitution or some document that tells it’s citizens the values that the country holds. It gives people parameters for how they understand themselves as part of the whole. If you want people to love your business and feel like they are a part of a culture then you need to create and display your core values. Your core values are going to drive your business decisions with regards to everything you do: hiring, firing, building systems, and even identifying your ideal client.
How to Extract Your Core Values For Your Fitness Business
The process of extracting your core values takes a little time but once you’re done they will guide your business and create a culture. We call it extracting your core values because it isn’t about making up values that sound nice. It is about extracting values from within yourself that you believe to be important. It is relatively simple because these values are already within you. We just have to ask the right questions, articulate those answers, and finally present them in a way that are going to be effective for your business. After these seven easy steps you will have extracted the core values for your fitness business.
Step 1: Choosing the Right People
In this first step, you want to start by choosing three people that you would love to have be a part of your business (hypothetically). If you want them to be a part of your business then they are going to be people that you respect. It could be anyone, family, friends, or even current employees. It doesn’t matter exactly who it is, just that you respect them, and they are real so you can name certain qualities about them. Choose wisely because these people are going to have an impact on your business. On a piece of paper write down the three names with space underneath to make a list. The next step you will start to list qualities that they have.
Step 2: List their Qualities
Look at the three people you have written down. One at a time, think about who they are to you, what they do for a living, and how they interact with other people and the world. Start to write down the qualities that you admire about them. Not just the qualities you admire but the qualities that you would want as a part of your business. But remember this is a brainstorming session. So you want to be free with your answers and whatever comes to mind is good. Write out up to ten qualities per person. (Examples: independent, empathic, kind, listener, leader, smart, consistent etc.)
Step 3: Most Common & Critical Qualities
Once you have completed this brainstorming session, you should have about 30 qualities written down. About ten under each name. Now, there should be repeats of qualities under each person’s name. That is good. Create two more columns that are labeled “most common” and “most critical”. For the “most common” column, you want to write down the qualities that you are seeing multiple times. It could be twice or even three times. For the “most critical” column write down the qualities that you believe are the most important to have in your business. Write 3-6 qualities in each column. Again find the overlap between these two lists and choose up to 5 qualities (3 is okay too) that are both critical and common. Next, we will turn these words into core values.
Step 4: Writing your Core Values
Once you have between 3-5 qualities chosen from the “most common” and “most critical” columns, you can create actual statements. You want to turn these qualities into actionable statements. We call these statements behavior statements. They tell people how to behave. Let’s say you came up with the following: Empathy, Communication, and Hard working.
The behavior statements may look like this:
Empathy: We will practice empathy toward everyone and in all situations.
Communication: We will communicate clearly and truthfully.
Hard-working: Our passion and ambition will show through our work.
There is no right or wrong way to write these statements. Just ensure that they are clear, short, and punchy. Check out this article to learn more about clarifying your messaging.
Step 5: Practice Patience
This is probably the hardest part of this entire process. Let the statements sit for at least 30 days. Why? You want to make sure that these statements are true and hold true. They are not something you want to come up with off the cuff, push out to your staff, and be left wondering in a few months why the heck you created core values that you don’t resonate with. These thirty days will give them a time test and give you some time to think about if you might be missing something.
Step 6: Edit and Revise
After that thirty day marination period, it is time to revisit your core values. When you come back to your statements, pay attention to how it feels reading them. Do they still ring true? Do they feel like they make sense for your fitness business? Can you see your staff and customers being able to create a culture around them? If all of these questions check out, then make sure all the spelling and grammar is up to snuff. If the statements don’t feel right then adjust where you need to, get them to a place where they feel true and long lasting. (Remember: These are the foundations of the culture of your fitness business.)
Step 7: Make it Official
Congratulations! You did it! You have created the core values for your business. Now that you have solid core values you can introduce them to your staff in your next meeting. Post them in a place where everyone (staff and customers) can see them. There are many ways that you can do this. We recommend that you get a professional poster or banner created. You want people to take them seriously. You don’t want to tuck away these core values for no one to see. You want to keep them on the top of everyone’s mind. You can go as far as putting them in your advertising or posting them on social media. Then people will know how to be a part of and interact within your fitness business. Building your gym culture will attract more like-minded people and help increase your retention rate.
This process is part of our Fitness Business Alignment System which has supported over 32k gym owners in growing their fitness businesses. It is our proprietary system that has been proven over and over again to yield results in terms of revenue, membership, and owner confidence. If you want to join the ranks of gym owners who are using our systems and individualized coaching to build their confidence and reach their goals then schedule a free strategy call.
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(Want to learn more about what fitness business coaching can do for you? Check out this article to learn about how coaching can help you reach your goals.)
Justin Hanover
Success Coach, Fitness Revolution
