Opening the Club Is the Easy Part

Anyone who’s opened a club knows there’s nothing easy about it. The lease, the construction, the equipment, the budget that keeps moving. Trying to hire a team when you’re still not completely sure what day you’re going to open.

I know what goes into it. I’ve built my own businesses and helped launch concepts inside national brands. Getting the doors open is a lot of work.

But we put so much energy into getting open that we don’t always spend enough time on how we’re actually going to run the place.

We’ll spend hours talking about finishes, equipment and the layout of the locker rooms. We should. Those things matter. But who’s covering the front desk when someone is giving a tour? Who’s turning the recovery rooms? When does the GM have time to manage the business if they’re covering shifts all week?

We need to work through those questions while we’re still planning the club.

Everyone’s there at opening. Then they aren’t.

I’ve been through this myself. Everyone’s on their A game at opening. You’ve got extra staff around, ownership is involved, the GM is working long hours. If something needs to get done, somebody jumps in and handles it.

You look around and think you’ve got the staffing covered. I’ve thought that too.

But you’re not really accounting for all those extra hands. Then people settle into their regular schedules, ownership steps back and the GM needs to work hours they can actually sustain. Now you start seeing the gaps.

Recovery is a good example. Cold plunges, infrared saunas, cryotherapy, red light. You build these things into the concept, and on paper it looks like one person can manage the area or the existing team can pick it up.

Then you’re open and people are actually using it.

Someone needs help getting started. A room needs to be turned for the next appointment. There’s cleaning, there are questions, and somebody has to make sure the procedures are being followed. Meanwhile, the person handling all of that is also supposed to be checking people in or answering the phone.

The work was getting done during opening. You just had more people doing it than you realized.

Some of it can fit into the existing team’s responsibilities. You work out the flow, put procedures in place and get better at it. Other parts need more coverage. I’ve had to work through both. You find out where you can use the team you already have and where you’re asking someone to be in two places at once.

And that changes the numbers. One additional position covered for 16 hours a day at $20 an hour is $9,600 in a 30-day month, before payroll taxes and benefits. That’s one position across the day, not one employee.

If that coverage wasn’t in your budget, you’re now trying to absorb another $9,600 a month or asking the existing team to somehow make it work.

This is how you can hit your membership goal and still miss your financial plan.

The spreadsheet has room. The 6 a.m. class doesn’t.

We can make capacity look pretty good when we spread it across an entire week.

But members don’t spread themselves evenly across the schedule. They have jobs, kids and routines. A lot of them want the same times.

An empty spot at noon doesn’t help the member who can only come at 6 a.m.

So when we’re deciding how many memberships we can sell, we need to understand what we can actually accommodate during the hours people want to use the club.

If the morning classes are already full and sales is still telling people they’ll have no problem getting in, we’re creating an issue. The sales numbers might look great this month. A few months later, we’re explaining why people are canceling.

Adding another class might help. It also takes an instructor, an available studio and enough time between sessions to turn the room. Depending on the layout and the format, you may not have much flexibility.

That’s why I want the operating conversation happening while we can still change the design and the offering. Once the club is built and the memberships are sold, some of those decisions get expensive.

A good GM still needs time to do the job.

I think we ask a lot of general managers without always being honest about what we’ve put on their plate.

We want them driving sales, coaching the team, watching payroll, taking care of members and keeping the building in good shape. Then someone calls out and they spend half the day at the front desk.

Of course they need to jump in sometimes. Everybody does. But if that’s happening all week, when is the rest of the job getting done?

Before we decide someone isn’t performing, we should look at how they’re spending their time and what we’ve given them authority to do.

Can they adjust coverage? Can they resolve a member issue? Can they make a reasonable change to the schedule? Or does every decision have to come back to the owner?

We can become the bottleneck ourselves. Then we get frustrated that nobody takes ownership.

The expectations and compensation need to make sense, too. If we tell the GM that retention, payroll and member experience matter, but their entire bonus is based on new sales, we shouldn’t be surprised by where their attention goes.

None of this gets solved by putting “hire a great GM” in the business plan.

Once we’re open, we need a regular time to look at what’s happening and make decisions. It doesn’t need to be complicated, and it definitely doesn’t need to be another meeting where everyone reads numbers off a report.

If sales are behind, where are they breaking down? Are we short on leads? Are people not showing up for appointments? Are we giving tours and not closing?

If payroll is high, do we have too much coverage, or are we below the revenue needed to support the minimum staffing this club requires? Those are different problems. Cutting hours without understanding which one we have can make it harder to sell memberships and take care of the members already paying us.

Pick the issue, decide who’s responsible for fixing it and follow up. It sounds basic. But it’s easy to spend months talking about the same problems when everyone is busy getting through the day.

The first 90 days are going to tell you a lot. You’ll find out which classes people use, where the team gets stretched, what members don’t understand and what costs more to deliver than you expected.

We’re not going to get all of it right before opening. I haven’t. But we can do a much better job of working through a normal operating week before we commit to the space, the staffing and the promises we’re making.

Who’s doing the work? How long does it take? What happens when it’s busy? What does it cost when the opening team goes home?

I want those answers in the plan, too.