Managing Everything Within the 4 Walls of Your Facility: FPO

As a general manager or owner of a facility, you are responsible for everything that happens or does not happen within the 4 walls of your facility.

You have no one to blame but yourself so you must take personal responsibility for everything. Does that mean you must do everything?

No, and it’s impossible so please do not try?

What you must learn to become great at managing everything within your 4 walls are 4 things:

Train your staff to the expectations you need them to be and withhold these expectations through continuous coaching and training.
Dig deep and be involved with every aspect of your business and if you don’t know it, find out, learn, and figure it out. Then moment you choose to ignore something because it hurts your pride that you don’t know it or it’s too uncomfortable to learn it is the moment that stuff will blow up in your face and you have no one to blame but yourself.
Every month, every week, every day, every minute, and every second you should be focused on growth. You will obviously do this by retaining current customers and that means doing everything within your power to keep them happy and provide exceptional services. Secondly, by accruing new customers and obtaining every single customer you possibly can! And you do this by constantly thinking about sales, sales, sales. Know your facility’s numbers, continuously strive to improve the numbers, market, market, and market some more. Continuously improve the marketing and duplicate this over and over and never ever let off the gas or take a break. The moment you let off the gas, stuff blows up again and you incur an expense that you needed that revenue to pay for that you lost when you let off the gas.
Delegate and hold all teammates responsible. If you can get good at delegating and holding teammates responsible for their actions, you will build leaders. But before you delegate you must be fully committed to steps 1 and 2 or you will lose credibility. You cannot delegate something to your staff if you are not willing to teach and coach them how to correctly and efficiently execute. Secondly, you cannot hold their feet to the fire if you:

a) don’t even know what you’re talking about in the first place

b) have never been in the trenches yourself and experienced their concerns first hand

c) if they have never even actually seen you do it yourself

An example would be if you told someone to stock the paper towel dispensers but you don’t even know how to do it yourself, they’ve never seen you do it because you don’t know how and then you can’t properly train them nor hold them responsible because you just lost all credibility by not knowing it in the first place.

As an owner or general manager if you can grasp all 4 of these and become great then you will succeed because everything you do will fall into these 4 categories and most things will fall in more than one!

Your DAILY must-do routine:

Before you arrive, you have already pre-planned you schedule the night before and updated your to-do lists with any pending items or unfinished business.

You arrive early before any appointments in full uniform because you lead by example.

You conduct a walkthrough of the facility noticing everything! Is the staff on site conducting themselves professionally? Are they all in proper uniforms looking professional? Is the club clean and in neat orderly fashion? Is everything stocked? Is everything up and running as it should be? Taking notes, the entire time of items to address or fix as needed.

Check all staff schedules and review with the team as needed. How many sessions, how many consults, how many renewal opportunities, etc. Does administrative have adequate hours blocked for projects, administrative work tasks? Are hours aligned with projected payroll? Does your sales team have adequate sales opportunities or does this need to be a focus and brought to the team’s attention?

Check daily incoming leads and disperse as needed or follow-up to book new appointments.

Check all messages (emails, voicemails, texts, messages from team and customers) delegate or follow up as needed, adding pending tasks to “to-do list”.

Check on all current staff and clients in facility “meet and greet” as you walk through say your hello’s and how are doing? Is there anything I can help you with? Then assist or direct as needed. This routine daily ensures that there is an open door for staff and customers to bring any issues to your attention. Maybe that treadmill has been broken for 3 days over the weekend and you had no idea but this member is almost fed up with it. Or maybe a staff member heard some unpleasant news through the grapevine and is on the fence about something and you can quickly clear the air and refocus the staff on the prominent issues at hand.

Next, you will begin working through your scheduled agenda. Maybe its staff training, maybe its sales appointments, maybe its projects and items from your pending to-do list. Whatever it is you must absolutely be organized and continuously stay organized as any manager or owner of any business. Simply put, an organization is a direct reflection of productivity and productivity leads to results.

TOP THINGS ALL GREAT MANAGERS OR BUSINESS OWNERS DO:

Have a vision, share your vision, believe in your vision, and get your team to believe in the vision of the company
Keep your ego in check. Period.
Make time to get to know your employees
Possess the ability to make the best decisions quickly
Be and stay open minded to new ideas
Help employees find their potential and coach them to reach it
Stay connected, always try to understand all sides, and never be defensive
Make employees feel important and ask for their feedback
Lead from the front, lead from the top and lead by example
Set expectations from the beginning and stay consistent
Give credit where credit is due and seek to find when credit is overdue
Never humiliate or degrade anyone ever
Smile and give praise daily
Own your mistakes, never be a coward or point fingers, accept the blame
Always maintain your cool, especially during the most stressful times
Stand behind people you believe in and lend a hand to the underdog
Always do the right thing and do what should be done, when it must be done, no matter what
Be flexible. Stuff will get thrown at you all day and if you are rigid, not flexible, and cannot easily adapt to change, you will fail.
Continuously learn and grow by educating yourself on new things
You must be able to prioritize
Communicate effectively, no tap-dancing, no back peddling, be prepared to have the conversations that no one wants to have.
Strive for excellence in everything
Know all your business numbers and monitor performance daily
Fill the right positions with the right people and build each person to be a leader in their position
Know where and how to draw the line between friend and employee and stick to it strictly, there is no bending here.

Was this Article Helpful?

If this article was helpful to you, please consider linking this article to your own blog or sharing this through the social buttons below. You will also find other great articles at “Personal and Professional Development“.

#Business #Fitness Equipment #Fitness Professional

About
Latest Posts

Ashlee Nejtek

My name is Ashlee (Nikki) Nejtek - Alfred, born and raised in the Central Texas Area. I have been in the fitness industry for over 12 years and have worked every position in the gym from kids’ club & front desk to Senior Management. I have worked at over 4 different chains of "big box" gyms giving me invaluable experience in the fitness industry. After years of working in corporate, my husband and I decided to take a step out of corporate and open our own facility, BEFIT, in 2013. We started training in our garage and quickly out grew it. In 2014 we opened a 2000 sq foot facility and again out grew it. BEFIT is now located at 900 S. WS. Young Dr. Killeen Tx 76543 in a 6000 sq foot warehouse-style fitness facility. Our vision is to build our own performance training health practice in the near future of about 12000 Sq foot so we have the capability to train much larger teams, groups of clientele and future patients.

Education:
● Associates Degree, May 2005, Temple College, Temple, TX
● Bachelor's Degree in Sports Management, Presidential Scholar
● Graduated Magna Cum Laude, May 2011, California University of Pennsylvania, PA
● Master’s Degree in Exercise Science & Health Promotion, July 2012, California University of Pennsylvania, PA
● Doctor of Integrative Health Care, Concentration in Clinical Nutrition, Huntington College of Health Sciences (2016-2018)
● Certified Personal Fitness Trainer, Oct. 2007 International Sports Science Association (ISSA)
● Certified Personal Trainer, May 2008 National Academy Sport Medicine (NASM)
● Certified Performance Enhancement Specialist, April 2010 National Academy Sport Medicine (NASM)
● Total Body Suspension Training Certified (TRX), April 2010 Fitness Anywhere
● Kettle Bell Instructor Certified, 2011 Kettle bell Concepts
● Certified Personal Trainer, February 2012 Smart Fitness International
● Certified Specialist in Speed and Explosion for Sports Competition, National Association of Speed and Explosion (NASE), March 2012
● CPR/AED/ First Aid Instructor Certification-Instructor Certification certifies in all 50 States-April 2012-current
● Certified in Bodybuilding Contest Prep, International Academy of Physique Conditioning (IAPC), Jan 2014
● Fit tour Certified Kickbox Instructor, Certified Yoga and Pilates Instructor Jan 2015

"MY WHY:"
I started in fitness as a way to find a healthy lifestyle for myself. I was always an athlete in high school and college. However, after a year of college, I quickly found myself involved with the wrong crowd and in the wrong relationships. I saw my life slipping away from me and my health suffering greatly as a result. I come from a family that is the polar opposite of my current lifestyle, and I saw myself beginning to follow these footsteps. I knew I did not want that for myself or my daughter’s future. I knew I had to change for the better. Growing up and seeing so many people suffer from self-inflicted, self-destructive habits that have caused them and their families great turmoil and physical stress, I envisioned a different way of life. I determined to do better and become better. With that motivation, I cleaned up my act, left everything behind, moved out of state, started back in school. Became a certified trainer and never looked back. Years later I have put myself through graduate school, earned Presidential Scholar and graduated Magna Cum Laude. Currently, I possess a variety of certifications and will continue to educate myself forever. I am currently working on my doctorate degree and I am excited to bring these tools I learn to our facility, staff, members, clients, and future patients. I have learned that there is nothing you cannot accomplish if you put your mind to it and put in the hard work. Success will come if you will work hard and never give up. The only way you won't accomplish your goal is if you quit. It's that simple. Join us at BEFIT, where we are not just a "gym" and we don't just "train" people. We are lifestyle coach's, lifestyle mentors, and we can help you develop yourself to your optimal physical capacity through self-empowerment, education, and lifestyle changes!