Imagine your parkour gym as a ladder with rungs ascending from the ground to the top. Each rung represents a role within your business, from low-value jobs like cleaning to high-value positions like CEO or marketing officer. As a gym owner, you start at the bottom, often taking on multiple roles simultaneously, but this can hinder your business's growth and your own value as a CEO.
In this article, we'll explore the concept of the "value ladder" and how it impacts entrepreneurs like you. We'll also introduce the notion of the "effective hourly rate" (EHR) and guide you on how to climb the value ladder to increase your business's potential.
The Problem:
The issue arises when the gym owner gets trapped in low-value roles, like cleaning and coaching, rather than focusing on business development. If you're sweeping floors or leading classes, your time isn't invested in creating marketing strategies or improving operational efficiency. This stunts business growth and limits the value you bring as a CEO.
Introducing the Effective Hourly Rate (EHR): The EHR is a crucial metric for understanding the value your work brings to your business. When stuck in low-value roles like cleaning, your EHR drops to the level of a janitor's hourly wage. To maximize your EHR, you should concentrate on high-value tasks that significantly benefit your business.
Climbing the Value Ladder:
To ascend the value ladder effectively, you need to identify and delegate low-value tasks. Here are some best practices for delegating work and bringing on new team members:
Janitorial Duties: Consider hiring in-house staff or contracting with a local janitorial service to handle cleaning tasks. Often, third-party services can provide a better job for less cost than employing your coaches.
Coaching: You cannot personally coach every class and expect to grow your business. Create Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) documentation and train coaches to ensure they can take over classes and maintain your standards. Consider sending coaches to attend 3rd party parkour coaching certifications or create robust in-house training to ensure their coaching quality.
Roles to Flow Through:
As you move up the value ladder, consider these roles:
Sales Leader: Personally engage with potential members, boosting your gym's membership and revenue. As you personally make sales you will gain a deeper sense of why folks are choosing your program, and why others are not. These insights can further help you drive growth.
Marketing Coordinator: Ensure a steady stream of leads by managing social media, email campaigns, and targeted ads. When you take this role on you will see what content and messages resonate with your target audience, and what does not. Time spent in this role will serve to increase how efficiently your business can acquire leads, dueling growth.
Head Coach: Oversee your coaching team, ensuring the quality of their sessions aligns with your standards and contributes to membership growth. As you master this position you will soon be creating policies and SOPs for this role enabling even this position to one day be delegated to a trusted competent future leader.
Scaling Up:
As your gym expands, continue climbing the value ladder. The value ladder has many rungs, as the gym owner you should always seek ways to increase your EHR to maximize the value you are creating as you work on your business. You may flow through roles such as...
Sales Director: Manage a team of salespeople to further increase revenue.
Expansion Officer: Utilize financing and cash flow to expand your operations.
Recruiter: Spend time finding and hiring top talent for your organization.
If you need help identifying and growing into these roles, book a free call with us at Motion Mentors. Our parkour business mentors will help you grow your business using tactics and strategies such as climbing the value ladder, maximizing your EHR, and much more.
actionable next steps:
In summary, this article has introduced you to the concept of the value ladder, the effective hourly rate (EHR), and how to climb the ladder to increase your business's potential. Your actionable next steps should include:
A: Calculate your current EHR by tracking the roles you occupy and their respective hourly values. Compare this to a local janitor's wage, for example.
B: Identify the lowest-value roles you are occupying as the gym owner and create a plan to delegate them to new hires or existing team members. Simultaneously, strategize how to engage in higher-value roles that generate sufficient cash flow to cover the new employee's wages.
By following these steps, you'll be well on your way to unlocking your business's potential and achieving greater success as a parkour gym owner.
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