Summer can be an amazing downtime at your gym…or it can be absolute chaos. Both of these things can be true depending on what type of gym you are.
- If you do full-day summer camps, it’s chaos.
- If you host camps for high schools or other all star teams, it’s chaos.
- If you travel to do choreography at other gyms, it’s chaos.
But if you’re not doing any of these things, maybe it’s chaos because you slightly enjoy the chaos. That’s not always a bad thing. I was talking to my staff about this yesterday, and I said, “I was reading in a book about why people feel like they’re in a constant state of chaos. Some people feel that way because they actually sort of enjoy putting out fires.”
Melanie immediately glared and Lexi, and Lexi started launching and pointing at herself. She said, “I don’t necessarily enjoy putting out fires, but I like to be on my toes and be busy all the time.”
She’s right. That fits her personality well. So, if that’s you – I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you’re wrong for feeling that way. In fact, I’m the same. If you could put a monitor on my brain and watch the activity, you’d find that I’m going a mile a minute most times of the day. I can’t slow down, but I also don’t usually want to.
So then how did I possibly get to this point where my staff runs 95% of things in the gym and I don’t. How am I OK with that?
Well, I stopped running a mile a minute doing things other people can do better than me. I watched my staff take on tasks, embrace them, improve them and make them better. Tasks that when I was going a mile a minute, I was not able to do that with. (If you’re saying, “I do it better than my staff and they’ll never do it better than me”, then you’re underestimating your staff. I once thought that about front desk, and BOY was I wrong.)
So, you give away these tasks and then what? Well, you have two options. You can sit on the sidelines and go a mile a minute micromanaging your staff (I’ve done that and don’t recommend it), or you can go a mile a minute and start looking at all those things you never really got time to do but always wanted to.
- You can start (or improve) that junior coaching program curriculum and hiring process.
- You can look at the open and click rates on your autoresponders and edit the ones that aren’t pulling well.
- You can schedule marketing emails to go out once or twice a week.
- You can look at your Google analytics and search console and figure out what edits need to be made on your website based on the analytics.
- You can look at your Facebook insights and figure out what content actually pulls best.
- You can look at next quarter’s community events and reach out to those hosting them to see which might benefit your gym to participate in.
- You can do Next Gen courses and spend time in this group seeing what others are doing.
- You can read books, listen to podcasts and watch the NG videos to see what else you can do to grow your programs.
- You can set a goal for your gym and then create an action plan to get there.
- You can focus on staff training.
- You can finally start Profit First (or review your percentages to make sure they’re still working.)
- You can plan your proshop items of the month for the next few months.
- You can review your specific item sales and look at trends so you can keep people buying and even increase their spending on things they love.
- You can reach out to the leads who attended events but never signed up for classes.
- You could book your coaching calls.
Guys…I could give you 100 more things you can do when you’re not bogged down with all the daily tasks. So, if you’re someone who likes the chaos – I can tell you – life can still be fast-paced and fun when you’re not the one putting out the fires.