338. Attending a night class to meet a potential replacement general manager

Ever skipped a personal event in the hope of securing a dream team member? That's the gamble we're talking about today. Picture this: a former studio star with a wealth of franchise experience is considering rejoining our team, and the excitement is palpable. But with the stakes high, skipping my son's t-ball game is a hard decision. We're diving into the balancing act between personal sacrifices and professional commitments, and how sometimes, you just have to take that chance. This episode unpacks the nuances of studio management, the thrill of potential hires, and the struggle of finding the right fit amid a sea of candidates that don't quite match up.

We explore the frustrations faced when the ideal general manager is as elusive as a needle in a haystack. The internal demand for experienced leadership clashes with a sparse talent pool, pushing us to consider external hires—a move that could ruffle feathers. Listen as we candidly discuss the realities of studio life, the pressure from both members and instructors, and the relentless pursuit of assembling a harmonious team. Whether it's stealing talent from other studios or waiting for the stars to align with this promising candidate, the journey is filled with challenges and hopes.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

All right, so heading to the studio for a second shift tonight. The GM is working two doubles this week, so he opens the morning and the evening sessions and then he's doing that for two days in a row. But today I'm going in. I haven't gone in for a night session in a long while. I'm going because someone that I'm very, very hopeful for being a manager at the studio is going to be working out tonight.

Speaker 1: 0:59

Long story short, she's been involved in the franchise for a while, took a break from the franchise Sorry, my phone just beeped at me Took a break from the franchise and is just working out other places now and she got an invite to come back and try a workout. Due to some, some certain staff and whatever reasons, she has not been at the studio, but we've assured her like hey, the folks that you were not a fan of they're not here. Um, they won't be in the studio and if you wanted to come by and give us another shot, and so she's coming in tonight. We're. Um, I'm intentionally taking a workout class the same time that she's taking a workout class. If it makes sense for us to talk either before or after phenomenal, that'd be great, and I'll just go from there In a dream scenario. She's managed this same brand before. She actually worked at this studio as a shift lead years ago she was an assistant manager at another studio in the same franchise, and so if she wanted to be the gm I'd be thrilled about it, I'd be stoked she. I found out she has another job right now, so it'd be really tough to overturn. Um, and I'm just gonna be available, and so I'm missing my son's t-ball game tonight, and that's that's hard for me to do because I'm I've been intentional about being present and being uncomfortably available at my kids' events and so, like last week, while I was there, my current manager had some a lot of questions about a lot of things, and so I, for the hour event, I spent 20 minutes answering his questions, helping him get unstuck on basic things and stuff that was pretty basic I'm not trying to like downplay it, but stuff that he just wanted to run by me before he got confirmation to proceed with it. So tonight missing another event, but I I believe six months from now, if the gal wants to work here and she interviews, gets an offer six months from now, I'll be happy that I missed the event, and if she doesn't, I'll at least feel good about making the effort, because right now there's like four or five people interviewing for the GM role and she's the only really good candidate.

Speaker 1: 3:23

Other folks it's crazy. Other folks are just not a very good fit. They either have been a member for a couple months and they don't know how to run a studio, or they're very new to form like kickboxing form, or they just know how to work out and they don't know anything else. One person says he seems like he'd be a pretty good fit, but he has, but he's going to be gone for the next four months out of the country on like personal backpacking, backpacking, backpacking, trip to Europe kind of thing. And so it's's.

Speaker 1: 3:56

It's funny because, like the members are clamoring for an experienced manager and there are no experienced managers applying, the instructors are clamoring for an experienced manager to apply. There are no available. No one is doing that, not of all the managers. None of them want to manage. They all just want to manage. They all just want to come in for a few hours a week, train or instruct, do a workout and go home. That's a gap. It's frustrating because I don't know how to find someone who's going to get that group approval.

Speaker 1: 4:29

My next best thing is find someone who has done it. Steal someone from another studio that's done it. Neither of those are impossible, and so my plan B after this if millionaires folks pan out, I'll have to put up a job posting and try to find someone external that has taught kickboxing before and has managed a studio. But they're an external hire. There's gonna be instant pushback on the why did you hire someone external? And the answer to me well, I opened it up internally and nobody applied. So I can't hire someone who's not there. So I went external. So I'm not quite sure how to do this right. Folks are wanting certain things and that's just not a possibility and I don't know how to proceed other than finding somebody else.

Speaker 1: 5:19

At the end of the day, having someone with fitness experience should be meaningful and I'm going to give tonight my best shot. So, showing up, you're going to want to do a workout, hopefully, have a chance to say hello to the person, hopefully, make a good impression, hopefully they like their first impression here and try to get someone plugged in. My GM knows that I'm looking for an experienced fitness person to manage the studio. They're being very graceful about it. I'm trying to do right by them, they're trying to do right by me while they look around for alternative roles.

Speaker 1: 6:00

It's just frustrating because I can't gain traction and the folks that are here, like want to be here. But folks are saying, hey, you know, I'm running out of patience, I can't keep doing this. I'm like, all right, cool, I'll trim back the hours. Like we'll train new people. Like what do you want me to do? Like find new people. Great, did that? Train new people? Cool, restoring that Monday.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Find someone that has done the role, that can be in the role. All right, zero people fit that criteria. So where do we go from here? It seems like what people want is the former manager to come back and, for reasons I won't go into on the podcast, is they conducted themselves in a way that unfortunately does not align with the studio for the long term and had to make some quick decisions about that for the long term, and had to make some quick decisions about that. So, for better or worse, people want the old person back or someone just like them, but that person's not going to, not healthy for the studio environment. So I'll quit blabbering. That's where we're at. No-transcript.