Just a quick one from me. Amy and I are working on some really cool projects and resources that we'll be bringing into the Skool community soon, designed to give you practical things you can actually use in your gym. But we'd also love to see what you guys are working on. Has anything we've posted here, or anything you've seen from myself or Amy on Instagram, made you think differently or inspired you to start working on something in your own gym? If so, show us! It could be a photo, a screenshot, or even just one sentence: “I'm working on improving our trial process.” “This post made me realise we need to improve our coach training.” “I'm struggling with X and I'm trying to figure it out.” Whatever it is, post it here and get involved. It helps us see what's actually happening in your gyms, what you're finding challenging and what you'd like help with, so we can keep finding ways to add more value to the community. And honestly, we just want to see what you're up to! One last thing: keep an eye on your DMs. I'll be reaching out to everyone individually over the next few days to ask you something specific. Thanks guys. Excited for what's coming!

Right, let's get started. Over the next 6 weeks we're going to work through the customer journey from beginning to end. We'll look at everything from how someone first finds your gymnastics business, through to booking a trial, becoming a member, staying with you and eventually recommending you to someone else. So I thought we'd start with a really simple question: Where do your new customers actually come from? There are probably more ways than you think. Someone might find you through Instagram or Facebook, Google, word of mouth, a recommendation from another parent, a school, a local event, seeing your venue, or maybe they've seen an advert you've paid for. Some of these things happen naturally. Others are things you can actively create. For example, you might naturally get a few new members through word of mouth every month. But you could also decide to run a referral campaign to deliberately encourage more of it. You might naturally get people finding you on Google, but you could also actively spend money on Google Ads. You might occasionally get enquiries from Facebook, but you could decide to run Meta Ads every month to deliberately bring more people into the business. And I think that's where this starts to become really interesting from a business point of view. Which sources of new customers are happening naturally, and which ones can you deliberately turn on when you need more customers? There's also some terminology I want to introduce as we go through these discussions. You may already use these words, or you may not, but for the purpose of this series: A lead = someone who has shown an interest in your business. For example, someone who fills in your form, messages you or enquires about a class. A conversion = when that person takes the next step you want them to take. For example, a lead books a trial, or a trial becomes a paying member. We'll use these terms throughout the series so you can start getting comfortable with some of the business language around marketing and sales.

Following on from my last post about communication and implementing change, I wanted to dig into something a little more practical. As a gymnastics business grows, communication can get quite messy. When you only have a few people in the business, it's easy. The owner tells the coaches what needs to happen. But what happens when you have managers, administrators, head coaches, supervisors and 30, 40 or 50+ coaches? Suddenly, who communicates what to whom becomes really important. Imagine you've decided to introduce a new process for trials. You might need your management team to understand the bigger picture, your coaches to understand what they need to do, your admin team to understand what happens before and after the trial, and your marketing team to make sure they're communicating the right message. But does everyone need to hear the same message? And should everyone hear it from the same person? I've been thinking about this in terms of a few simple questions: What actually needs to be communicated? Why are we making the change? Who needs to know? What's the best way to communicate it? WhatsApp, email, a meeting, training, an SOP or something else? Who is responsible for communicating it? And probably most importantly, what happens after the initial announcement? Because I think this is where a lot of businesses fall down. Telling someone something isn't the same as implementing it. If I tell 30 coaches, "From next week, we're changing X", I've communicated the change. But have I actually implemented it? Maybe I need to explain it again, demonstrate it, train people, remind them, give managers responsibility for checking it, get feedback and eventually make it part of the normal way we operate. So I'm interested in how everyone currently does this. How does information flow through your gymnastics business? If you're the owner, do you communicate directly with your coaches, or do you have managers who act as that communication layer? And when you introduce a new process or change, how do you make sure it actually sticks?

One of my most common pieces of advice for gymnastics club leaders: We need to TELL less and ASK more It can be very easy when you’re experienced to simply tell a coach what they should do “Stand here instead” “Make sure you’re watching that child” “Please can you stop leaning” “Change that station to this” And sometimes, especially when safety is involved, we absolutely do need to give clear instructions But if we want to actually EDUCATE our coaches to think for themselves, we need to ask more questions ❌ Instead of: “Stand here instead" or "Please can you stop leaning” ✅ Try: “Where do you think the safest place is for you to stand here?” ❌ Instead of: “You need to make that activity more engaging” ✅ Try: “How could you make this more fun for the gymnasts?” ❌ Instead of: “You need to speak louder” ✅ Try: “Do you think every gymnast could hear that instruction?” ❌ Instead of: “You need to change this station” ✅ Try: “What are the gymnasts struggling with here, and how could we adapt the station to help them?” When we immediately give coaches the answer, we solve that one problem for them When we ask the right question, we teach them how to solve similar problems for themselves in the future It also gives us an insight into their thinking, they might actually know what to do, but didn't have the confidence to make the change themselves They may even give an answer we hadn’t considered which gives us a new idea Or their answer might show us that there is a gap in their knowledge that we need to educate them (or others) on The goal of staff development shouldn’t be to create coaches who constantly need a manager standing beside them telling them what to do It should be to develop coaches who can OBSERVE, THINK, PROBLEM-SOLVE and make good decisions independently So next time you’re about to tell a coach what they need to do, consider whether you could ask them a question instead 🧡💬 Comment below an example of a question you could ask someone in the gym this week, think about past examples where you have had to help your team... this could help someone else! 🧡

Give ONE person ownership of your club's social media One of the biggest mistakes I see gymnastics clubs make is having social media as no one's or everyone's responsibility When something is everyone's responsibility... everyone assumes someone else will get the video, take the photo or remember to post. This is diffusion of responsibility, and it's why social media often becomes inconsistent or gets forgotten altogether That doesn't mean your social media manager needs to create every single piece of content themselves Your whole team can help collect content Coaches can film snippets from sessions, managers can capture events and different members of staff can contribute ideas. But ONE person needs to be responsible for bringing it all together. Their responsibilities could include: • Managing the posting schedule • Deciding what content is needed • Asking coaches and staff to film specific things • Making sure content is being collected regularly • Managing a shared content folder or Google Drive • Collating footage from across the club • Editing content or organising whoever edits it • Writing captions • Uploading and scheduling posts Think of them as the manager of your social media, rather than the person who has to physically create every piece of content And importantly - this is a JOB If someone is responsible for editing, writing captions, uploading and scheduling posts, they need to be given paid time to do it You could allocate specific social media time within their normal working hours Or, if they're doing the work from home, agree a clear deliverable and payment for completing it For example: 3 posts edited, written and scheduled each week = £X This means you're paying for an agreed outcome rather than trying to measure how many hours someone has spent working from home (because you truly will never know how many hours someone spends) What I wouldn't recommend is giving someone responsibility for your social media and then expecting them to squeeze it in around everything else - or do it for free because they love the club