Smart gym owners work hard to establish a company culture. It’s crucial for customers, employees, and the business’ image in the community. 

Protecting your culture is just as important as building it. And sometimes that means seeing management challenges through a different lens, like when to remove a team member or a client from the environment.

Those decisions are sometimes difficult but always necessary for the greater good.

Threats Can Come from Inside or Outside

Consider these two scenarios. 

In one, the employee who’s supposed to open the gym at 5 a.m. oversleeps a few times, requiring you to scramble and face an upset crowd of members waiting to get inside. The first time, you pick up the slack and end up working two full shifts in a single day. The next time, you have to wake up another employee and ask her to rush down and handle it.

This might look like a simple employee problem, and it is. But it’s also a culture problem. This is NOT how you want to do business – with customers, employees or your culture.

In another, you have a male customer who repeatedly makes sexist comments to the young woman who works at your front desk. It’s disrespectful and uncomfortable for her, and it’s inhibiting her ability to do the job. She’s unhappy and feels trapped. Others are noticing.

What’s your responsibility here? Should you keep taking the customer’s monthly dues and tell your employee to ignore it? Or do you tell the customer to find another gym and show everyone what’s important to you and your culture?

Culture Shows What You’re All About

Your culture reflects your values. Those values must include things like reliability, professionalism, meeting (and exceeding) expectations, and treating clients and coworkers respectfully.

Your culture determines not just who comes to you as a teammate or customer. It determines who stays. Who’s happy. Who spreads good news about you in the community.

It’s a huge part of retention – of clients and of good employees.

You can’t grow without protecting it, even when it comes to making difficult choices about difficult people.

But when you see those bad actors in this light, it can give you that extra guidance that you’re making the right decision to show them the door and protect those who remain.

Let’s discuss these and other management challenges in your free consultation with a Fitness Revolution Success Coach. Schedule it today.

Most people who decide to open a fitness business have some past experiences in common. For instance, they’ve probably been a personal trainer. Maybe they’ve held management positions with an employer and risen high in the ranks.

Thinking like a trainer and a manager is important. But to really succeed, you have to assume another role and think like an entrepreneur.

This mindset is crucial so you can make better decisions for the success of your business. It’s about how we see ourselves. It’s about the stories we tell others about who we are. And it’s centered around critical thinking and decision making.

Here’s an overview of what I mean.

Why It Matters

Entrepreneurs quickly learn that they’ve got to do more with less, that time is crucial, and that decisions add up to consequences good or bad. It’s the difference between owning a job and owning a business.

So think about the essential qualities of a successful gym owner. How do you go about making smart business decisions? What questions drive your critical thinking and problem solving?

Remember that, if your leadership doesn’t develop, then neither will your business.

Essential Qualities

A successful gym owner has:

•     Stakeholder awareness. Who they are and what their perspectives are. What’s your goal with them, and how do you want them to feel?
•     Strong communications skills
•     Information gathering and staying informed
•     Presence – How you’re seen and heard
•     Adaptability – Making changes in real time as needed
•     Critical Thinking. It starts with self-guided questioning. What’s happening right now? What possible changes are coming? What am I missing?

How an Entrepreneur Thinks

Leaders are always thinking about how to grow and develop these critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.

They follow a framework for making smart decisions that’s based on knowing their purpose, limitations and risk, and then developing a plan.

I hope this gets you thinking about how, with a slightly different mindset, you can start thinking like an entrepreneur to grow your business into something great.

We have an awesome team of Success Coaches here to talk about this and everything else to shorten your learning curve. It starts with a free consultation, so schedule your call today.