Our Not So Secret Strategic Plan

A business blogger I used to follow once wrote a piece about how people are too worried about their competitors trying to steal their ideas. He challenged his readers to give away their ideas to the competition and he bet them they couldn’t even give away their best ideas.

Turned out he was right!

When I worked for another personal training studio between leaving Goodlife and starting 3 Seasons, I shared all my best ideas with them, and they politely but firmly declined practically every idea I shared. They just wanted me to show up and train my clients and leave the running of the business to them.

Encouraged by Kaleda Connell who has a history of building in public, I have decided to start doing the same.

I think by building in public and sharing my thinking it will help me attract the best possible team to 3 Seasons. I want to work with people who have the potential (and desire) to be the very best trainers and office staff, so that they are a pleasure to work with and so that together we can get the clients of 3 Seasons outstanding results on a reliable/consistent basis.

With that in mind, here is a rough outline of my plan for 3 Seasons. In the weeks and months to come I will write more detailed posts about each element of this plan. If you have questions or comments I’d love to hear from you. My email address is yoni (@) 3seasonspersonaltraining.com

Intro

I’ve had a long term plan in mind for a while, but I never put pen to paper. Today I wanted to share my long term plans to help clients get better and faster results, while also making 3 Seasons an even better place to work for the “A Players” I am trying to attract to the team.

I will write individual blog posts or the coming weeks/months expanding on each item so that clients and team members have a clearer picture of where we’re going and why.

Short Term Priorities

I want to spend my time doing the following:

– Helping my clients get outstanding results
– Helping the other trainers get their clients outstanding results
– Mentoring the other trainers and contributing to their professional development
– Investing time into my own professional development so that we can stay ahead of the curve and help our clients reach their goals (and make sure we are helping them work towards the “right” goals)
– Getting more awesome clients for Carey, Daisy, Jacqui, and Marwan so that I can fill their schedules and so 3 Seasons can help more people reach their health/fitness goals.
– Do more to build community and increase value for clients (through non revenue generating activities and/or programs run on a cost recovery basis)

I don’t want to spend my time on anything else. Anything other than these six things is not the highest and best use of my time.

In order to get to this point I need to do the following:

– Hire and train an amazing administrative assistant to take that burden off of me.
– Cut back on the number of hours I train clients so there is enough time for me to work on marketing/sales to get the other trainers busier
– Effective Monday September 4th I’m no longer training clients at 6pm
– Effective Jacqui’s full time return I will no longer train the 6am 3:1 small group sessions.
– Effective Carey’s return from his wedding/honeymoon at the end of September I will no longer train clients on Wednesdays
Once Carey is back at the end of September I will have four days dedicated to training clients (Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri) and two days dedicated to being the head coach / owner. Wednesdays, and one day on the weekend. The other weekend day will be a personal day for reading books, spending time in nature, spending time with friends and family, chores/errands, etc.
– Avoid getting stretched too thin so that I can maintain service levels/quality for clients I am the lead trainer for.
– Spend less time watching Youtube / Crave (HBO) and more time reading books (this is embarrassing to admit but it’s the truth).



Medium Term

At some point later this year or next, once Carey, Daisy, Jacqui, and Marwan are all as busy as they want to be, we will have a wait list. I will prioritize quality of service and team morale over growth. I value building and maintaining excellence over growth.

I am not hiring more trainers until the admin work has been successfully delegated so that I will have time to on board the new trainer without it detracting from service levels.

As we get busier the next phase will involve the following

1. Conceiving and launching new products/services that will help our clients Raise Their Ceiling even higher
   • Having a nutrition/lifestyle coaching service, possibly run by a nutritionist or dietician.
   • Themed classes (6-8+ people per class) as an add on for clients and/or to allow people to train with us at a lower price point (mobility, strongman, structural balance
   • Dedicated small group training where everyone has the same goal.
   • E.G. Starting a new group in the fall for people preparing for ski season, having a winter program for golfers who want to recover from the 2023 golf season and prepare for the 2024 golf season, etc.
   • None of these are a guarantee/promise. Just some ideas of what might come down the line.
2. Hire one more trainer for mornings and 1-2 more trainers for evenings. The plan is to definitely not have more than seven “in person” trainers (including the head coach) and maybe to only have as many as five “in person” trainers (including the head coach)

3. At some point once there are 3-5 busy full time trainers other than myself I will start looking to hire a general manager to take “ownership” over customer service, sales/marketing, admin, maintaining the physical facility (including cleanliness) etc.
   • I will remain head coach at this time, and depending on the strengths/weaknesses of the GM I will retain other responsibilities so that the GM can focus on their strengths.
     • My intuition is that it will be harder to replace me as the head coach than general manager.
4. At some point in 2024 I want to start planning to launch an online service and/or hybrid in person/online service so that we can serve people who live further from the gym and bring our methodology to more people. Other reasons I want to do this:
   • We will focus on asynchronous training, so that people who can’t commit to a fixed schedule will be able to train with us
   • By focusing on an asynchronous service, trainers will be able to fill gaps in their schedule with paid work, and if they have clients that they love working with that travel a lot, it will matter less since they’ll just slot their “online training” time into whatever gaps they happen to have.

Long Term

I don’t have specific long term plans in mind, but these are the various things I have thought about and considered:

• Mentoring someone to replace me as the head coach so I can move more into a CEO type role (not even sure I want to do this, and if I do this would take AT LEAST 2-5+ years from today for it to happen).
• Opening a second location if I find someone who I would trust being in charge of it as a club director
• Looking into buying a building so we could have control over our future, along with:
  • More space for things that enhance recovery like a sauna, Pressotherapy, and maybe other recovery modalities like a cold plunge tank, float tank, etc.
  • Enough space to have an area for small group training sessions and a separate area for 1:1 training.
  • Possibly having complementary businesses/services inside the same building (e.g. physiotherapy, cafe with healthy food/snacks, etc.)
• Having some sort of free or low cost set of ebooks or online program available to people who can’t afford in person training and/or bespoke online training.

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