If you’re like a lot of the gym owners I talk to, you do almost everything in your gym. Ask yourself a question – do you spend the majority of your time working on your business, or working in your business? On vs. in – it’s just one little word, but it can mean so much!
The problem with many independent gym owners is that they are consumed by the day to day tasks involved with running their business. This means that they are so engrossed in the 4 walls of the gym, that they seldom get out there to learn what’s going on with the rest of the world, or even more importantly, what’s going on in the fitness industry. How many business turnaround shows have you watched? I will admit it – I’m addicted to them! I’ve watched them all – Robert Irvine’s Restaurant Impossible, Tabitha’s Salon Takeover, Ali Velshi’s “The Turnaround”, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, and the list goes on! In many cases, just the fresh and non-biased perspective of someone coming in from the outside and getting the owner to think a different way, turns the entire business around!
I’ve owned many small businesses in my entrepreneurial career. Some have been hits and others have been duds. But one thing that I always know going into a new business venture is that (in my mind) it is only truly a business if it can exist profitably without me being directly involved in the day to day running of it. Now I’m not saying that when the business is a baby, it doesn’t need my constant coddling, but eventually when it reaches maturity, I should be freed up to move towards bigger picture items, such as overall business strategy, starting another business, or even planning the exit strategy for this one. And the only way to get there is to establish systems.
Systems, as well as their counterparts (policies and procedures) are fascinating to me! Many people think systems are boring or mundane, but I’ve always admired systems, and when I visit other succesful businesses out there, I am always looking at the systems that they have in place, and trying to figure out what I can learn from them. So when i am in the processs of building a new business, one of the first things that I consider once it opens is “what systems can I put in place to make this business run like a well oiled machine?”. I create a policy and procedure manual, and I write out every single task I can think of in excruciating detail – hoping that the task becomes easily taught, and easily followed. If a task is too hard to be taught effectively, I will seriously consider if there is anything I can do structurally to make it so the task doesn’t have to be done at all.
Think about your gym. If you were forced to leave it for an extended period of time (say one month), what would it look like when you returned? Would the business just click along, churning out the day to day functions needed to continue making a profit? Or would it crash and burn without your direct involvement. If your answer is the latter, then I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you don’t own a business after all, you own a job. Or even more to the point, the business owns you!