There are three emails in my inbox right this moment from gym owners looking for assistance in making a hire. Week after week, I get essentially the same request: Would you mind putting me in touch with any recent CSP intern alums who may be interested in a job opportunity? We need a great coach.
I love receiving this request, as it increases the likelihood I can do right by a current or former intern and repay the favor in the form of helping to secure a quality coaching role. This being said, rarely, if ever at all, do interns bite on the opportunities that I drop into our CSP Intern alumni networking page on Facebook.
Why is this, you ask?
It’s quite simple, really — people aren’t all that excited to hop on a plane and relocate their lives for part-time roles that “may” turn into full-time employment at some point down the road.
Can you blame them?
You see, at least 9 out of 10 opportunities that roll into my inbox come in the form of part-time roles “to start.” In the rare occurrence that I do come across a salaried position with a full-time job description, engagement shoots through the roof.
In fact, just last week I sent a full-time job description for a role in Colorado to four former interns, none of which live inside of a two-hour flight radius of the opportunity. Two politely declined thanks to satisfaction in their current roles, two asked to be connected with the employer, and at least one of them has a flight booked to interview in-person in the coming weeks.
People will make moves for concrete job opportunities. They will not, however, trust a gym owner they don’t know when told “we’re about to blow up and when we do we’ll get you to full-time.”
If you’re one of the many gym owners out there lamenting the challenges of finding great people, but will not entertain the idea of taking on a full-time coach, the battle you are fighting will continue to rage on for the indefinite future.
Ask yourself this: Why do I expect a talented coach to take a huge risk on me if I’m not willing to take a sizable risk on him?
I get it, this is expensive.
I’m not oblivious to the fact that adding a full-time coach is both expensive and anxiety-inducing for many gym owners. However, I rarely find that those same gym owners are extracting maximum efficiencies from themselves and their existing teams at the moment that they decide to add bodies to the coaching staff. Instead, they look at adding additional part-time coaches to a model that already employs one or more part-time coaches.
I reached out to my friend and fellow gym owner, Doug Spurling, to get his two cents because he has an “only full-time hires” policy at his gym. He shared several compelling reasons for this unofficial policy:
“We talk as an industry about building culture. Well our culture starts with our team. There’s something to be said for a full-time team member who’s here for the mission, excited to make a career out of this, and not treating the job as a side gig they fit in when they can. We’ve had tremendous success employing almost exclusively full-time because I’m able to drive a true team approach, hold them to higher standards, and it becomes much easier to deliver an exceptional product on the day-to-day basis. The communication is better, there’s true team work, and we collectively drive culture by being our authentic selves. My goal is to create an environment where coaches can create a career, buy homes, start families, and hopefully one day retire from.”
Strong community and team vibe up at Spurling Fitness
It probably wont blow your mind to learn that Doug runs a wildly successful gym. What may surprise you, however, is to learn that he does so out of a small suburban community in the state of Maine. We’re not talking about a sprawling metropolis here.
If you want to employ fully engaged and productive coaches, you should be looking to make 100% of your part-time employees full-time before adding additional staff. If you have a part-time coach on your staff, and are looking to add another, what you really have is a single full-time role waiting to be filled.
Your clients crave consistency in the faces they see in the gym every day, and the best way to meet that expectation is to deliver one “whole” coach as opposed to two “half” ones. It might suck to hear this, but your current part-time guy likely either needs to jump to a full-time role, or jump ship entirely to make room for someone who wants to be all-in.
Apologies for the rant, but I want both to line up better opportunities for my people moving forward, and to see you build the team you dream of as quickly as possible.
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