How to Empower a GM to Run Your Gym (Part 2) with Ben Pickard

[00:00:00] Hello, my friend on today’s episode, I’m speaking with Ben Pickard and we’re actually having a followup conversation to a previous episode, episode 364 was called how to empower a GM to run your gym. And we’ve got a lot of questions about that episode. So we thought we’d answer some of them in today’s episode.

So if you haven’t listened to that one, go back and listen to it. And today we continue by Ben sharing more of its experience. For how he got his GM to really run his gym, including how he pays his GM, how he trained his GM and how he let go of the reins of all the things that he used to do running his gym.

So if you’re in that position as a gym owner, and you’re hoping to let go of the reins a little bit and spend a little less time in your gym, this is a great episode for you. Let’s dive in.

Welcome to the business for unicorns podcast, where we help gym owners unleash the full potential of their [00:01:00] business. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym, get ready to unlock your potential.

And become a real unicorn in the fitness industry. Let’s begin.

Hello, fitness business nerds. What’s up. Welcome to another episode of the business unicorns podcast. Before we jump into today’s topic. Just a quick reminder that our next round of our gym growth blast off. Program is open. You are personally invited to come work with Mark Fisher for 12 weeks to grow your monthly recurring revenue.

That’s what the program is in this program. Over the course of 12 weeks, he’ll give you everything you need to grow your monthly recurring revenue and nothing. You don’t, it’s a very focused program. It gets started on September 23rd and they’re only, I think at the time of recording this, maybe 10 spots left.

And so if you’d like to know more, click the link down the show notes or DM us over on Instagram, and we’ll let you know everything there is about the program, but [00:02:00] it starts September 23rd. Only a few spots left come join us, which brings me to today’s topic, which is with Ben Pickard. Hi, how are you, my friend?

I’m great. How are you doing? Good, good. I’m so excited for today’s podcast. We’re going to do a followup of the most recent one that you and I recorded, which is all about empowering your GM to run your gym. You got a lot of questions about it when the episode launched. And so we’re going to dive in and continue that topic.

But before we jump in, just how are you doing my friend? How’s life? Honestly, life has been great. I love summer and I love fall. All of my hobbies involve not it not being winter, which is ironic for Canada. Yup. But yeah, I had just, I liked the weather. I liked everything, but things are good. We, you may not know this, but we have a tenant in our house, so we have been renting above our garage.

So it’s great because it’s like separate. They don’t live in our basement basement and I just got a new tenant and had to do some renovations to get the tenant in place. So I was doing my least favorite renovation, which is plumbing, but I fixed all the problems. You’re so handy. One day I’ll be half as handy as Ben [00:03:00] Pickard in my life.

Good for you. Same thing. We’re recording this kind of in our final weeks of summer in early September here, and I’m trying to get as much summer in as possible. I think I’ve mentioned before on this podcast, but I’ve been renting a summer house on Long Island, specifically Fire Island, just east of New York City for about.

Eight years with the same group of friends and we go into this house at the beach a few weeks out of every summer. And so I just spent, um, a good five days with some friends at this beach house. And it’s great. It’s always, it’s always a good time and stepping away and walking on the beach with friends and having late night grill outs.

And Pool time and hot tub time. It’s really just, it does the soul good. Yeah. A hundred percent. It does. Yeah. Um, let’s dive into today’s topic again, our last episode, which I think was episode three 64. So for listeners, if you haven’t listened to that episode yet, go back and listen to it. The title was how to empower a GM to run your gym.

And Ben shared a lot of his experience getting his current GM up and running in his gym. And a lot of you reached out with some questions about. More questions about how he did that. So [00:04:00] we’re going to do a follow up to that today, and I’m going to ask them the questions that we got from listeners and just probe a little deeper into Ben’s experience.

So thanks for agreeing to do this, Ben, first and foremost, can you just talk a little bit more about how you trained your GM? So like, how do you get someone up and running to be the GM of a gym? Who’s never had that role before? Yeah. I’m starting real broad. All right. Good. Yeah. How do you just make someone fully independent?

Seriously? You can do that in three minutes or less, right? Yeah. I, like, I definitely follow. Yeah. As best I could, all of our hiring best practices, which is like things like being patient and creating SOPs for things and reviewing it with them, not just being like, Hey, can you handle this? Thanks. Bye. Yeah.

So one of the ways I went about it was actually a suggestion I got from you before I created the role. I don’t know if you remember way back in the day I made my job description started as all the things that I do in a week. So I did like a version of a time audit, more like a task audit. And then I chunked them into things I want to keep doing, [00:05:00] things I don’t want to keep doing.

Yep. Yep. And all of the things I didn’t want to keep doing. I wrote most of them. I wrote SOPs for, I didn’t get through all of them before I hired her. But when we were going through all of those things, I used like a three step process for training her. And we both had to agree that the step was done before we can move on.

Nice. So for instance, if I was training her on how to do X thing, as soon as we did that, we’d highlight that line, right. And I had this in a Google doc, everything she would have to do as a bullet point linked to SOPs and stuff. So when I introduced it, it was red. And then when we got to the point where she was like semi competent, we made it yellow.

And then when she was fully trained on it, and again, she had to also agree so that I didn’t rush the process because that was my downfall with previous GMs. We both had to agree and we’d make it green. Once it was green, we didn’t talk about it again, unless she had questions for me. Of course we’ll answer them.

Yeah. And I do want to say it wasn’t just a massive, you know, Dump of a Google doc that everything was unorganized. Like there is a lot more structure to it, but the kind of lesson here is. Anytime I [00:06:00] trained her on something, the fewest number of times we could touch that thing was three. That means we got a lot of reps in and then we managed capacity to not have everything be in process at the same time.

Yep. And we layered that on with. Initially, we met almost every day for like probably an hour to 90 minutes for training. And then we slowly pared that down to once a week over the course of probably six to nine months, if I had to guess. Sure. So we spent the stuff that I didn’t have systemized. I balanced out my lack of preparation was just spending a lot of quality time together.

I’m not saying that’s like the best approach, but the combination of those two gave us what we needed, but it also did a really good job putting a lot of marbles in the trust jar. Like we get along great. Yeah. so much. I think it’s essential, Ben, I think it’s essential when you’re, um, creating someone to run your business, basically for you every day on your behalf.

And you’re doing that for the first time. You need to spend time together. They need to learn how you think, then to [00:07:00] learn how, how you organize your own tasks and priorities. And yeah, bravo. Let me see if I can summarize a few takeaways I heard from you. One is before you even hired, you got clear about the things you wanted this person to do.

You made a list of things you want to take care of. Off your plate, things you want to keep on your plate. I think that’s a great suggestion for our listeners. Do as you hired, you’d use some hiring best practices. Make sure you find the right person for the job. And right. We, there’s a lot of podcasts we’ve done about that.

And so people can go back and listen to those, but you have to hire the right person. And then I love the idea of having a giant. Google doc, which is just all the things you, this person’s going to need to learn how to do and using the red, yellow, green system. It’s red. If you don’t know what it’s yellow, if we both agree, you’re okay at it.

And it’s great. And we both agree that you know how to do it. I think it’s so dead simple, but really effective. And then I think your last tip I would pull take away from this is you got to spend some quality time together. Part of that, the benefit of that red, yellow, green system kind of traffic light system is that you get a lot of reps in that you have to do it over and [00:08:00] over again for the person to feel confident they can really take on, on your behalf.

And as we’ve talked about before, we’ve talked on podcasts about delegating often people delegate. Like maniacs and they’re like, Hey, Ben, I got you to do this thing for me here. I put an email, go do it. Thanks. Like that’s not delegating. That person’s going to have a lot of questions. They’re going to mess up a few times.

They’re going to be straight up bad at it for a while. And so I think when it comes to someone like a GM, the stakes are a little bit higher. Some of the things that are on their plate could have real consequences if they fuck up a lot. And so making sure that you’re really clear on the tasks and how the tasks get done and you spend quality time together to make sure you’re delegating slowly.

But those are great takeaways. You did that very fast. Anything I missed that you want to highlight? I think something, yes, I think something that I don’t know if we talked about in the last podcast, but, I was crystal clear with Leisha about my intentions from literally day one. Yeah. And that crystal clear has also come with full transparency.

I’m not advocating for trying to transparent financials [00:09:00] or against transparent financials. I’m just sharing like literally in an interview, I showed her our financials to be like, here’s what this can be. And I was clear with her that my goal was to free up more time to work with BFU because that’s what really fills my cup.

And I feel like it’s aligned with my purpose. And I just wanted to address that. If. Prior to this, I felt very guilty about not working as much in my own business. I still actually have clients who give me a little bit of shit from about it. Sometimes nicely, sometimes in a very asshole way. We’ll save that for another, another podcast.

Yeah. How to deal with clients who are mad at you perpetually. But I told her that the goal is that like, I’m not going to be here anymore. Like my maximum is going to be like showing face a day a week. And that’s what I do now. Half a day a week, give or take. And I think there’s something to be said for that clarity because prior to that, I felt really guilty about, Oh, can I not be in the business?

Like, what about this? I still need to be around. And I actually think part of the reason other GMs didn’t work out so well, like many reasons, depending on the case, but one of them is that like, I want, I wanted them to be the manager, [00:10:00] but I was still the decision maker. Yeah. And if everybody knows that I’m still the decision maker, if nothing else, it’s going to be really hard for them to do their job.

The fact that I am not physically present in the building. Makes it a lot easier for everything to not just get elevated up to me. And that’s not a lack, that’s not a knock on the competency of the human that you’ve hired. It’s the, like, you have to be willing to let go. And that means some sales are going to get burned.

Some clients might get mad. Some processes might get fucked up. Shit might go a little bit awry, but you create guardrails in place so that we’re not talking catastrophe. We’re talking like fall and scrape your knee. Yeah, I think it’s such a great point that you’re right. I think so many folks that we talked to who said to us as their coaches, I really want to spend less time in the business.

I really want to open up another business or just spend more time with the family or just have days off or take vacations. One of the things that holds them back is themselves from not really being able to let go. And I think you stated so beautifully, so much of what you were holding onto was decision [00:11:00] making power, right?

And the authority that I think can be intoxicating in some ways, it’s just habit. And it’s hard to let go. And I was going to ask you about this. This is a good transition. So you just talk a little bit about how did you let go of the reins? Clearly teaching someone to do the tasks is one thing, but then getting out of their way and letting them to your point, make some mistakes or straight up mess up or really cost the business some money or have clients be mad about you not being there or have team members be mad that now they’re being managed by someone who hasn’t been there as long.

There’s a lot of. Tension that can pull you back in. And so how did you, this again, could be a whole nother podcast episode, but just what are some quick ish tips for how you put some of those guardrails in place to let go? It’s like the first thing I did, I think was. Join Unicorn Society and spend time with you.

Yeah. And I swear I don’t mean this as a sales pitch, even though I mean this as a sales pitch. Um, like, I, I felt really lost [00:12:00] and I felt, what if this happens and I’m, like most humans, I’m really good at creating the most compelling narratives in my head of all the way that things can go wrong. And then I let it, that influence my behavior when it’s all just shit that my head made up.

So a lot of it was like, with your guidance to a lot of degree, it got to get a credit where it’s due, but I was willing to walk the path and see what would happen. And unfortunately I had to get to a place where I was basically ready to either have a manager or not have a business anymore. So it became very clear that when those are your only two options, having a manager is a lot less painful than not having a business.

So I don’t want to say you have to hit rock bottom to do it, but I was willing to deal with that discomfort. And I’ve done a lot of work through a landmark S course that happens to being wealth where I live. I’m part of a men’s group, which is 50 percent group therapy, 50 percent leadership development.

However long I’ve been part of Unicorn Society, it feels like forever at this point. Like I, I did a lot of leaning into discomfort and there were conversations like quite literally sitting in a team meeting when my longest [00:13:00] tenured coach is like, it’s not okay that Ben isn’t leading the team anymore.

And me and that manager had to be on the same page. And that manager was like, Yeah. That’s why he hired me. You’re not going to not have leadership. It’s just not going to be him for the things that it used to be. That’s why my job exists. And we didn’t say that as jerks. It was about clear, like clear as kind, but you’d have to be willing to get some of those scrapes and bruises.

And if every time, I don’t know, you’re trying to keep teach your kid to swim. And if every time they’re like,

It’s not going to work like you have to let them do the thing. It’s going to be a little uncomfortable, but then they’re going to get better at it. Then there’ll be something more uncomfortable and you’ll get better at it. So I don’t think I have anything new to add at this point, other than I just, I think I really embodied leaning into discomfort.

And I guess at the end of the day, knowing that if worse came to worst, I could go back into doing it. I just wasn’t going to. Like the stakes weren’t life or death. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s really the, just all the things [00:14:00] you listed that you did that were helpful, I think shows how much you were like in conversation about it with yourself, that they were in unicorn society, in the men’s group, all these things you were doing was that you were talking about your stuff.

You were talking about all the things that were working and not working and, and, and. And not being pulled back in immediately when they went wrong. So I think you’re right. I think a good analogy is something like teaching your kids, something like sleep training for a newborn, right? You got to let them cry for a while.

So I’m told I don’t have any kids, but that’s what I’m told. It’s uncomfortable and it’s weird and it’s awkward. But if every time you go back in, you’re actually not helping them. The same thing is true for your business. There’s going to be clients that are a little mad staff that are a little mad processes that get dropped or a little confused, but if you have to jump back in as the owner every single time, when your goal is really to spend less time in, you’re not actually.

Helping your cause. And I remember, I don’t remember all of our conversations well, but I’m glad to have played some part in your transition. And what I remember of our conversations were as I’ve had them with many people, including not just you is treating the next step as just like the next [00:15:00] experiment.

Right. I know we, we, you and I use that language a lot when we were talking about you hiring a GM. So, okay, what’s the next thing you can try? What’s the next series of experiments you’re going to run. And to your point, you can always go back if you need to, but you got to try it out. The next experiment might be to, okay, they’ll let your new jam GM run the team meeting, see how that goes.

Let your GM do performance review. See how that goes. Let your GM do some sales. Sales call calls without you see how that goes. Right. But all of those experiments build trust for you in your GM and it builds your trust with your GM that you’re not going to come back in and undercut them and take the reins away.

Which is a really important point because I still did that a little bit, probably more than a little bit of being honest, but through those conversations, like she would give me feedback. I need you to not try to fix what I’m doing. I just need you to support me in doing it. That’s part of the quarterly review that we talked about in the last podcast.

We won’t rehash it. So I want to be clear. I still screwed that up a little bit, but. I was willing to try and take it with a grain of salt because Michael and I are both biased towards [00:16:00] Unicorn Society, but it was a true testament to like the type of quality coaching that we can get to. Yes. If you need more lead sources and profit first and whatever in your business, like we can help you with the tactical, but we probably talked once every six weeks, but the action step I had were like profound and scary.

And that is what transformed my business into what it is today. Yeah, 100 percent making transitions like that, hiring someone to really run the day to day for your business. It requires vulnerability, right? It requires a lot of introspection requires a little bit of identity shift, right? Cause I’ll speak for myself.

A lot of why I get stuck in my career in specific roles is that I feel valued in that role. I get really good at that job and I like that people need me and I like that I have answers and walking away from a job where you feel needed and valued. And you have, you can really. Give people the answers when they need them.

It’s hard to walk away from that. There’s a lot I get out of that. And a lot of owners, I think, gym owners are stuck in that same place. Like, they’re the best trainer in their gym. So [00:17:00] they have a hard time pulling themselves off the floor because they’re just so valued in that job. They’re the best at everything or they think they’re the best at everything.

It’s really hard to take that ego hit. 100%. Yeah. All right. We got a few more minutes. I want to get to at least one or two other questions. I know people have been asking about our last podcast episode, and one of the things we didn’t cover was pay. And I’m sure this could, again, could be its own episode, but just broadly speaking, what are some things that you did for figuring out how to pay your GM, either that worked or didn’t work?

Yeah. I’d say what we’re doing right now is working 95%. I think it’s good. So I’m happy to get into specific numbers, but with the disclaimer that unless you’re listening to this in Guelph, Ontario, these numbers won’t be relevant to you. I looked, I went on Glassdoor and Indeed and all the places where there’s jobs.

I looked up fitness manager roles and that gave me things like Orange Theory, F45, a lot of independent gyms aren’t really looking for a manager. And I found what’s the average pay range for comparable places. [00:18:00] That are drivable in my area. And then I added 5, 000 to it. And that’s not a mass, a masterful formula.

It was just everyone else was paying 50 to 55 K. So I want slightly better candidates. I don’t want to go through this rigmarole more often than I have to. And I asked myself the question, would I rather have 5k or do I rather have the perfect fit? I’d rather have the perfect fit. So I added five grand.

It felt right. Um, so that’s the, that’s the base cat base pay. And then the bonus is basically a profit share. And this is where it’s like the 5 percent could come in that might not be working perfectly. So I follow Profit First religiously in my business. My accountant’s Profit First certified. It works for me.

I love it. And my GM gets 20 percent of our profit allocation. And whatever that total number is. And it’s, that’s again, requires transparent financials. If I could go back in time and do it differently, I would have gated that a little bit. So something we did renegotiate in the summer or in the spring of this year.

And now we have [00:19:00] benchmarks in place that her base pay increases when we hit certain benchmarks of this many clients plus 200 bucks at this many clients plus a hundred bucks and without getting into all the math. I did math to make sure that would work. It was based on average client value. So if I was going to do it again, I’d probably have some gates in place around other things that require the bonus rather than just a profit share.

But the reason I like profit share is a true GM role, which is what I’ve tried to create and continuing to try to create is someone who truly is in control of both the growth, i. e. the revenue and the expenses of the business. You do not, I did not want to give someone a profit share or a bonus that Something that they’re like responsible for, they get the negative out, but they don’t get the positive of it.

And we shared an exceptional job managing the expenses and really being clear on what do we need and not need. And from my perspective, maybe this being a little bit too broad, but whether she makes us a thousand dollars or she saves us a thousand dollars. It’s 1, 000 a profit. Yeah. I think she should get a piece of that.

So I was really trying to incentivize the [00:20:00] behaviors that I wanted her to do. And I’m also a big believer in like, we all went together sometimes that I believe I have a little bit to a fault, but even when I was a kid, I never saw the point of winning the lottery and keeping it all to yourself. Don’t get me wrong.

I’m very financially motivated, but I don’t want to be rich and alone in a big house. Yeah. I want to be surrounded by people with shared values. We can do fun things together. And yes, my profit share is bigger than her profit share. I made the thing, but there’s a prosperity element that’s important to me.

And I’d rather something a friend said to me a long time ago, who’s super successful in business is every time he does a deal. He wants it to be 1 percent better for the other person because his goal is that he wants to continue to deal deals with that person and he wants his reputation to always be positive.

So in my mind, I’m like, even if I got it a little bit wrong and maybe I could save a little bit of money with my GM, there’s a piece of me that’s like, fuck it. I don’t say that like lightly. It’s that it just feels right. And it makes me able to live a happier [00:21:00] life. I love that. I think that’s beautiful. I think a lot of our listeners will resonate with that.

You want to create a great living for someone who’s going to help you take care of your business, take care of your baby, right? You want to make that a good life and a good job for someone. I’ll repeat. I think part of the formula you’re sharing here, which is credit based salary. That’s based on. What’s competitive in your area, go on Glassdoor, go on Indeed, see what other management roles people are hiring for.

And if you want, if you can afford it, add a little bit more, add a couple thousand bucks to the annual salary. So you’re competitive and you can find some of the area’s top talent, if that’s in your budget. If not, I think competing at least at the same level as other jobs, I think will be necessary to get any talent.

Yeah, and then consider having a bonus or in the form of a profit share you started with a 20 percent of a profit first Profit pool, which is a whole nother topic for another day But for those of you know That means it’s basically a certain percentage of predetermined profit and they get a percentage of that and the thing that you would maybe add On to that or suggest people add on to that is a few more sword you use a few more gates Yeah, you know A [00:22:00] few more requirements in terms of how, when they get that and when they don’t, and there’ll be, you want them to drive specific performance.

But generally speaking, the way, the reason you like profit share. And I agree with this is that a GM should be responsible for both revenue and profitability. He’s responsible for getting people in the door and helping sell and also keeping expenses low to low enough to the point where the business remains profitable.

And when they can share in that profit, then it incentivizes them in both of those directions, which is why it’s better than just a bonus based on just revenue or bonus based on a percentage of salary. Like I think a bonus based on profit for a GM, I think is makes a ton of sense. And whether it’s 20 percent of that pool more or less, I think it’s a good starting point.

Yeah. All right. I know we’re probably at our time. Anything else that you thought was, anything else that you think was really important to the success of getting your GM up and running that we didn’t talk about yet? I’m sure there are many things, but if there had to be one more quick tip, what would it be?

I think it’s that my level of [00:23:00] effort has not decreased. Yes, I spend less time with her today than I did on the second day of employment. But the shits I give to be blunt about it has not decreased. Like when we have our meeting with her, as we talked about the last one is the most important meeting part of my week.

We both are on top of making sure our things get done. I mean, that really like just continues to put marbles in the trust jar. And when it comes to stuff, we’re actually joking today about the fact that me and her kind of don’t need quarterly reviews because we have a lot of candor in our regular conversations.

Sure. And I was just like, well, I feel stupid not doing a thing that I teach other people’s we’re going to do it just for integrity. Yeah. But I’m still putting the same amount of effort. Like she’s still, as far as my business goes, the most important person at the business. And I haven’t put my feet up and relaxed, which is something I’ve done before in other roles when I’ve poorly delegated and usually got poor results.

Yeah. So that’s, that’s great. I don’t know. When you get a GM in your business, you don’t just get to drink mojitos on the beach or do whatever you dream of doing. You’re still actively involved and actively trying. It’s just. [00:24:00] Yeah. I think that’s it. I think if you’ve, if you, your promise was that I’m still going to be here with, for a weekly meeting.

I’m still going to be making FaceTime in the gym for a half a day or a day per week that you’re really doing that, like with 110%, whatever time you’ve dedicated to being there and being available, that you’re there and you’re engaged as fully as you can be because at the end of the day, they are still just the GM.

They don’t own the place. There’s going to be some oversight is you and the owner will always have to take on, unless at one point you really do want to be drinking mojitos on the beach. And then what you need might be more than a GM, like some sort of super GM. But I think in this case, this is a fantastic kind of step for you to make you, to allow you to really.

Go have a whole another job with business for unicorns and only really have to be in your gym. Like you said, about a half day ish per week is huge. And I think would be a huge win for some of our listeners. Thank you for sharing your experience, Ben. I’m sure we’ll have you back and probably even continue this topic again at some point, but listeners, if you thought this was valuable, great.

Go back and make sure you listen to [00:25:00] episode three 64 of the first part of this conversation. And I hope you were taking some notes because some really great tips, practical advice. For how to get a GM to run your gym and thank you for the great conversation and listeners last reminder, go join our Jim growth blast off program.

It starts September 23rd, click the download link in the show notes. And we hope to see you there. Have a good one, Ben. Talk to you on the next one.