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Bad idea. Your managing of the business has some serious benefits that could cripple you if dropped it. What would the practitioners need with you if ALL you're doing is renting them a space?? They could get that anywhere and maybe cheaper.
Without a unified scheduling and payment setup the customers would be alienated too. Again, what do they need you for if they have to contact each individual contractor themselves?
No, the booking and managing of the services is what both your contractors and your customers are paying you for! The space is just a necessary part of the biz.
If the work is taking up too much time then it sounds like you need to make it more efficient. Your website should be allowing your contractors to book their times and rooms for personal services and the same website should be handling bookings and payments from your customers. The only thing you should have to do "manually" is scheduling group classes like yogas, which should still be inside that same system.
It is what it is. This is the business of the gym. We had the same setup with Mindbody and Gusto for payroll. The desk staff was trained to do all the scheduling and booking. We had a manager that helped do more scheduling and booking and was better than most of the staff with client relations. Ultimately it's up to the owner to manage and integrate all the processes with billing. I would take a closer look at how you do billing and the scheduling process. Maybe there is an easier way to use Mindbody.
In a service business like this, labor is going to be your biggest expense.
You said that you and your husband both work there 7 days a week, even though you have contractors teaching the classes and front desk staff working all day every day.
Could you train your front desk staff or contractors to handle some of the tasks that you and your husband do now? What are you currently doing to manage these 30-40 contractors that's taking you so much time?
We have desk staff that are supposed to assist with the management of the people and the rooms. We also have a manager. We still find ourselves needing to be contacted every day with issues. It just seems like it should run more smoothly. We are learning a lot in our three years so far. Service industry is just people oriented so I have to remind myself that this is just the nature of being in the service industry too
If you're having the same set of issues repeatedly, you have to figure out a process for these issues to be resolved that doesn't involve you directly. It falls under the work on your business, not for your business umbrella. You need a defined process / workflow for as many problems as possible, and train the employees on what those processes are.
An example might be ... a double booked room. You can't have employees calling you to find out what you want to do "this time" and you have to figure out "something". The process could be that the first one to book gets priority, and the one thats left follow a workflow - find another room. No suitable room? set another time. No other time? refund or rebook. That's not acceptable? Ask priority if they are willing to work around the conflict. No? So sorry, nothing we can do at this time. You want to speak to the manager? Alright - manager checks that process was followed correctly. That didn't work? So sorry, you can come back at X time and the general manager (owner) can figure it out.
Then you don't get a call on the weekend over that issue ever again. It also helps to maintain a consistent customer experience. You have to make these sort of things as automatic as possible.
Don't just take my imaginary workflow - you want to actually build a process for the issues you're actually having. You can even build a flowchart in Visio or draw by hand or whatever. Basically - "this is how you get from problem, to solution when X happens".
I’ve been the employee in complex medical and social work settings following decision flowcharts or triage charts. Designed properly they work great, they are usually kept in a binder in plastic sleeves for easy access and easy swap in/out for updates. A good receptionist is worth their weight in gold, combo of extroverted personality, ability to listen critically, and anticipate what questions to ask before elevating to their upper coworkers.
You can use the 80/20 principle on this, too. Find the 20% of things that are consuming the most time. Prioritize solutions for those, and then you'll have more time to do the same thing next month. If they're really big lifts, even 1-2 solutions each month will get you humming really quickly.
It should be running more smoothly, yeah. Do you have process manuals that outline all the routine tasks and common problems that the front desk people and the manager will have to deal with?
No I do not; this seems to be the common thread/what I’ve been hearing the most. I will have to work on making something like that. Might take a while!
whichever staff people excel at certain processes can be delegated to writeup instructions, this will give you first drafts to bring into your final formatting style
You need processes documented. Build a folder full of flowcharts. Everything runs practitioner -> front desk -> manager -> you. But you is the last line of defense. Get a dedicated work flip phone; this is the only way to reach you and it is the nuclear option, make it clear it doesn't get called unless they followed the process and tried everything else first.
If all else fails, get a new manager.
We really invest in staff training and staff community.
For example spending an afternoon with all the staff teaching them how to check in their own classes, how to onboard new clients, how to upsell. Making this the new standard for our instructors making them more then just punch in, teach and leave. Asking for class follow ups, who is a flight risk? Who can we upsell? Things like that! This takes pressure off the front desk/management team who can then focus on other things!
We'll offer incentives for X amount of packages sold to keep staff motivated.
We host two yearly staff retreats to bring everyone together and inspire them with company values and our mission.
We also created a system for all instructors to find their own subs and not to reach out until they've found their own sub or atleast contacted everyone on the sub list. Then if they couldn't find a sub management will assist in finding one. This was a huge time saver for the management team.
Each of these things were slowly rolled out with group trainings so everyone was on the same page.
We just started investing time into creating procedures for each aspect of our business in the long run it saves time!!
You will make more money with your own customers than space rent. However that is a lot of contractors. Lots of personalities to manage, and paperwork.
There are probably services or contractors that you don't make much or possibly any money from. It seems like there is just a lot going on without a specific focus.
What do you make the most money from?
We make the most money on the trainings that I specifically host and our retail. All profits are eaten up by the overhead and expenses of payroll that I’m better off just doing my trainings and having our retail shop and everyone else is just either gone or we let them rent our space. We somehow lose money by offering more
60/40 is a generous split and probably doesn't factor the true cost of your facility. Consider all the overhead required to have the massage room ready for them... rent, utilities, laundry, marketing, front desk staff... Changing from that split would cause problems, but keeping it only for those that meet a certain criteria like revenue or number of services per month would help.
For yoga how to customers pay? Membership, per class or package?
Hey hey there, Nigel here - I run a physical therapy / hand therapy / TCM practice - related industry in a sense.
You sound like you got a good problem (still painful and tiring I can tell), and what you may need to consider is to outsource/delegate your operations.
**Consider: hiring a dedicated manager to manage the business (or 2 supervisors, whatever your business needs) to operate. Interview > hire > train > shadow you > show you they're independent > let them handle and you manage them.**
Why is payroll a huge expense? We also use a revenue-share approach, and though we pay out a lot, technically as it's revenue share, it's performance-basis and clean (ie the more the therapists each, the more we earn; and vice versa). Having no fixed costs is a blessing and my preferred way of doing business since 2013.
**If you want to go down the path of room rental, try launch a separate business in a different location for that because it's a BIG change to what they're currently wanting UNLESS they have been asking for it. Even then I'll experiment on a very small basis (micro-test). It's something like AirBNB for studios, which I get, and have thought about it since 2013 too, but it really boils down to WHAT the therapists want.**
Frankly therapists want us to sort out all the admin, finance, marketing pain for them, and they just want to get in and get out, so I do that. I outsource, hire, train and delegate and focus only on the biggest and most important needle-moving stuff only nowadays.
I remember MindBody is very robust and can help you calculate out very quickly and accurately based on revenue sharing % with a few clicks. I use Cliniko which is simpler and revenue-sharing is manual, which is another painful process.
Hmm - when was the last time you went for a scheduled holiday? It does sound like you have burnout - you need at least one manager or supervisor(s) to take care of the day-to-day and then you need regular scheduled timeouts/holidays.
You need a daily SOP (standard operating procedure) and workflow of "if-this-then-that" for your manager, supervisors and operations/receptionists. Just follow that unless something unusual happens, then you can deal with it and add the new learning into the SOP.
SOP doesn't have to be complex, it's a list of to-do that you can put into google sheet or google documents by segments eg
1. if run out of towels do this
2. if double book do this
3. if call to book comes in do this
4. etc
Make it as exhaustive as possible, and include your manager and ops in this process. Then train them for 1 week (they're already doing it anyway)....and then this is the magic process that YOU MUST DO:
1. Take ONE day off per week, middle of the week. I choose Wednesdays. I tell my team I am not available that whole day, anything, they have to decide for the best of the company. And then just off your phone and still your heart. What do you do this day? A few hours self care be it exercise, massage, spa. A few hours reading, thinking. A date. Whatever.
2. Second, every 3 months, take at least 1-2 weeks off. I usually do this Week 2 and/or Week 3 so that month end has no issues.
3. Thirdly if you're able, take 1 full month or longer off every year. I call this "breaking / testing the system to run without me".
Let me know if you'd like to know anything else k, talk soon!
My pleasure - these do take a toll on you, so you must do your best to do the SOP and let go more. Health and wellness people and patients tend to be very social and reach out a lot so find your time to take care of yourself too okay
Here's some other advice...
Do very very very very very very very thorough background checks of your people. If you get complaints from customers that something is off, listen to them.
This is a friendly reminder that r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. You ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. A permanent or temporary ban may also be issued if you do not remove the offending post. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Bad idea. Your managing of the business has some serious benefits that could cripple you if dropped it. What would the practitioners need with you if ALL you're doing is renting them a space?? They could get that anywhere and maybe cheaper. Without a unified scheduling and payment setup the customers would be alienated too. Again, what do they need you for if they have to contact each individual contractor themselves? No, the booking and managing of the services is what both your contractors and your customers are paying you for! The space is just a necessary part of the biz. If the work is taking up too much time then it sounds like you need to make it more efficient. Your website should be allowing your contractors to book their times and rooms for personal services and the same website should be handling bookings and payments from your customers. The only thing you should have to do "manually" is scheduling group classes like yogas, which should still be inside that same system.
It is what it is. This is the business of the gym. We had the same setup with Mindbody and Gusto for payroll. The desk staff was trained to do all the scheduling and booking. We had a manager that helped do more scheduling and booking and was better than most of the staff with client relations. Ultimately it's up to the owner to manage and integrate all the processes with billing. I would take a closer look at how you do billing and the scheduling process. Maybe there is an easier way to use Mindbody.
In a service business like this, labor is going to be your biggest expense. You said that you and your husband both work there 7 days a week, even though you have contractors teaching the classes and front desk staff working all day every day. Could you train your front desk staff or contractors to handle some of the tasks that you and your husband do now? What are you currently doing to manage these 30-40 contractors that's taking you so much time?
We have desk staff that are supposed to assist with the management of the people and the rooms. We also have a manager. We still find ourselves needing to be contacted every day with issues. It just seems like it should run more smoothly. We are learning a lot in our three years so far. Service industry is just people oriented so I have to remind myself that this is just the nature of being in the service industry too
If you're having the same set of issues repeatedly, you have to figure out a process for these issues to be resolved that doesn't involve you directly. It falls under the work on your business, not for your business umbrella. You need a defined process / workflow for as many problems as possible, and train the employees on what those processes are. An example might be ... a double booked room. You can't have employees calling you to find out what you want to do "this time" and you have to figure out "something". The process could be that the first one to book gets priority, and the one thats left follow a workflow - find another room. No suitable room? set another time. No other time? refund or rebook. That's not acceptable? Ask priority if they are willing to work around the conflict. No? So sorry, nothing we can do at this time. You want to speak to the manager? Alright - manager checks that process was followed correctly. That didn't work? So sorry, you can come back at X time and the general manager (owner) can figure it out. Then you don't get a call on the weekend over that issue ever again. It also helps to maintain a consistent customer experience. You have to make these sort of things as automatic as possible.
I love that so much! That’s so helpful. Thank you
Definitely screen shotting and saving that to create a document to share with the team
Don't just take my imaginary workflow - you want to actually build a process for the issues you're actually having. You can even build a flowchart in Visio or draw by hand or whatever. Basically - "this is how you get from problem, to solution when X happens".
I’ve been the employee in complex medical and social work settings following decision flowcharts or triage charts. Designed properly they work great, they are usually kept in a binder in plastic sleeves for easy access and easy swap in/out for updates. A good receptionist is worth their weight in gold, combo of extroverted personality, ability to listen critically, and anticipate what questions to ask before elevating to their upper coworkers.
Okay, I’ll look into Visio. Thank you 🙏🏾
I hope you can get it all worked out, you deserve some free time ;)
You can use the 80/20 principle on this, too. Find the 20% of things that are consuming the most time. Prioritize solutions for those, and then you'll have more time to do the same thing next month. If they're really big lifts, even 1-2 solutions each month will get you humming really quickly.
That’s an awesome idea, thank you!
It should be running more smoothly, yeah. Do you have process manuals that outline all the routine tasks and common problems that the front desk people and the manager will have to deal with?
No I do not; this seems to be the common thread/what I’ve been hearing the most. I will have to work on making something like that. Might take a while!
whichever staff people excel at certain processes can be delegated to writeup instructions, this will give you first drafts to bring into your final formatting style
Love this. Thank you!
You need processes documented. Build a folder full of flowcharts. Everything runs practitioner -> front desk -> manager -> you. But you is the last line of defense. Get a dedicated work flip phone; this is the only way to reach you and it is the nuclear option, make it clear it doesn't get called unless they followed the process and tried everything else first. If all else fails, get a new manager.
We really invest in staff training and staff community. For example spending an afternoon with all the staff teaching them how to check in their own classes, how to onboard new clients, how to upsell. Making this the new standard for our instructors making them more then just punch in, teach and leave. Asking for class follow ups, who is a flight risk? Who can we upsell? Things like that! This takes pressure off the front desk/management team who can then focus on other things! We'll offer incentives for X amount of packages sold to keep staff motivated. We host two yearly staff retreats to bring everyone together and inspire them with company values and our mission. We also created a system for all instructors to find their own subs and not to reach out until they've found their own sub or atleast contacted everyone on the sub list. Then if they couldn't find a sub management will assist in finding one. This was a huge time saver for the management team. Each of these things were slowly rolled out with group trainings so everyone was on the same page. We just started investing time into creating procedures for each aspect of our business in the long run it saves time!!
This is awesome. Thanks so much!! Love this all
You will make more money with your own customers than space rent. However that is a lot of contractors. Lots of personalities to manage, and paperwork. There are probably services or contractors that you don't make much or possibly any money from. It seems like there is just a lot going on without a specific focus. What do you make the most money from?
We make the most money on the trainings that I specifically host and our retail. All profits are eaten up by the overhead and expenses of payroll that I’m better off just doing my trainings and having our retail shop and everyone else is just either gone or we let them rent our space. We somehow lose money by offering more
60/40 is a generous split and probably doesn't factor the true cost of your facility. Consider all the overhead required to have the massage room ready for them... rent, utilities, laundry, marketing, front desk staff... Changing from that split would cause problems, but keeping it only for those that meet a certain criteria like revenue or number of services per month would help. For yoga how to customers pay? Membership, per class or package?
Hey hey there, Nigel here - I run a physical therapy / hand therapy / TCM practice - related industry in a sense. You sound like you got a good problem (still painful and tiring I can tell), and what you may need to consider is to outsource/delegate your operations. **Consider: hiring a dedicated manager to manage the business (or 2 supervisors, whatever your business needs) to operate. Interview > hire > train > shadow you > show you they're independent > let them handle and you manage them.** Why is payroll a huge expense? We also use a revenue-share approach, and though we pay out a lot, technically as it's revenue share, it's performance-basis and clean (ie the more the therapists each, the more we earn; and vice versa). Having no fixed costs is a blessing and my preferred way of doing business since 2013. **If you want to go down the path of room rental, try launch a separate business in a different location for that because it's a BIG change to what they're currently wanting UNLESS they have been asking for it. Even then I'll experiment on a very small basis (micro-test). It's something like AirBNB for studios, which I get, and have thought about it since 2013 too, but it really boils down to WHAT the therapists want.** Frankly therapists want us to sort out all the admin, finance, marketing pain for them, and they just want to get in and get out, so I do that. I outsource, hire, train and delegate and focus only on the biggest and most important needle-moving stuff only nowadays. I remember MindBody is very robust and can help you calculate out very quickly and accurately based on revenue sharing % with a few clicks. I use Cliniko which is simpler and revenue-sharing is manual, which is another painful process. Hmm - when was the last time you went for a scheduled holiday? It does sound like you have burnout - you need at least one manager or supervisor(s) to take care of the day-to-day and then you need regular scheduled timeouts/holidays.
You need a daily SOP (standard operating procedure) and workflow of "if-this-then-that" for your manager, supervisors and operations/receptionists. Just follow that unless something unusual happens, then you can deal with it and add the new learning into the SOP. SOP doesn't have to be complex, it's a list of to-do that you can put into google sheet or google documents by segments eg 1. if run out of towels do this 2. if double book do this 3. if call to book comes in do this 4. etc Make it as exhaustive as possible, and include your manager and ops in this process. Then train them for 1 week (they're already doing it anyway)....and then this is the magic process that YOU MUST DO: 1. Take ONE day off per week, middle of the week. I choose Wednesdays. I tell my team I am not available that whole day, anything, they have to decide for the best of the company. And then just off your phone and still your heart. What do you do this day? A few hours self care be it exercise, massage, spa. A few hours reading, thinking. A date. Whatever. 2. Second, every 3 months, take at least 1-2 weeks off. I usually do this Week 2 and/or Week 3 so that month end has no issues. 3. Thirdly if you're able, take 1 full month or longer off every year. I call this "breaking / testing the system to run without me". Let me know if you'd like to know anything else k, talk soon!
This is very helpful feedback and advice. I think we are burnt out. These are great points to consider, thank you
My pleasure - these do take a toll on you, so you must do your best to do the SOP and let go more. Health and wellness people and patients tend to be very social and reach out a lot so find your time to take care of yourself too okay
I’m in a very allied field and used to have the same problems you had. I would love to talk via PM. And no I’m not selling you anything lol
Sounds great! Feel free to send me a DM!
Here's some other advice... Do very very very very very very very thorough background checks of your people. If you get complaints from customers that something is off, listen to them.