Turning Coaches Into Business Partners

Your coaches aren’t just leading your classes, they’re the personification of your brand. As the gym owner, you try to connect with all of your members, but you can’t be everywhere at once. Your coaches are your direct line to your members. They see them in their shining moments and the ones where they want to give up. They are the leaders of your community and inspire your members to be their best. They are selling your product through the standards they hold and the example they set.

Part-time coaches are no exception. They should be play an active role in developing your business and creating value for your members. All coaches have a unique set to skills they can share with your membership, while allowing them to continue their education and become better leaders.

You can get your coaches involved by playing to their strengths and making some simple adjustments to the expectations of their coaching role.

Content is King

Your community wants to see consistent, fresh content from your business but creating all the content for your gym can be exhausting as the owner. Give your coaches some responsibility by asking them to get involved. You can curate ideas and have coaches choose which they are most interested in or let them brainstorm topics they think members would benefit most from.

If your gym has a total of 12 full and part-time coaches, and each one writes just one blog post on a topic they are passionate about, you’ve just created content for a whole year’s worth of monthly blog posts.

Whether it’s a full blog or a quick Instagram post, every coach can provide useful content. Have someone who doesn’t have great writing or Insta skills? No problem. They can record a quick video talking through their topic. Having a variety of media types (blogs, posts, videos, etc) will reach a wider range of your membership.

Offer a Seminar

Encourage coaches to pursue continuing education and teach it to your members. Coaches can host pay (or free) seminars on specialized topics for members to attend. These occasional seminars are great ways to improve member retention while allowing your coaches to teach something they love. 

Great (and easy) 1-2hr seminar topics:

• Supplements (what do we take as coaches?)
• Double-Unders
• Gymnastics (pull-ups, muscle-ups, toes-to-bar)
• Meal Prep 101
• Focused Mobility (how to work through shoulder, wrist, hip pain)

A Clean Gym is Everyone's Responsibility

If you’re drowning in cleaning duties, split it up between your coaches. Create an opening and closing procedure, and simple list of things for coaches to look for during each shift. This provides them with responsibility while also giving your gym a cohesive look. When all the coaches are responsible for making sure the bathrooms are stocked with toilet paper, it won’t fall solely on your plate and it gives them an additional buy in to keeping the ship running smoothly.

It’s Their Home Too 

Promote the mentality that it’s their gym as much as it is yours. And no, you don’t have to sign away your ownership rights to relay the message. Creating the understanding that you’ve created this home for coaches and how they treat it when they are there reflects on all of you.

You are the owner, so you're driving the train, but let your coaches help lay the tracks for where you want it to go. The simple question of “What would you do differently if YOU owned this gym?” goes a long way in terms of getting coaches to become active participants in the success of your facility. Your coaches see and here things you don't. Tap into that perspective and encourage them to think about the business as if they owned it. 

By getting your coaches involved, you’ll carry less of the burden while providing more to your members. Your box will become more of a second home to them than it already is when they feel they are contributing to the big picture.