Before my time in recruitment I was in the fitness industry and managed several clubs for LA fitness.  I progressed from a Personal Trainer, through fitness, sales and deputy management before a successful period successfully managing both city and residential clubs.

I have now spent 5 years interviewing for and recruiting General, Club and Studio Managers for private chains, independents, boutique, leisure and commercial leisure brands.  I have interviewed well over a thousand and placed hundreds and these are my thoughts on the 5 areas where the best ones excel.

The first thing to recognise before we start is that every operator will have differing requirements to being a General Manager in their business, things like, length of experience within the industry and skillset focus and depth e.g. sales or fitness. However, there are a number of fundamental skills that need to be on point to be a great General Manager in the fitness industry, which we will focus on below.

Commercial

As you are aware, any business needs to make money to survive! This is a critical area of becoming a successful General Manager. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is just front-line membership sales, there is so much more to it.

Of course, having a fantastic track record in delivering KPI’s and sales target is necessary but there are several elements to consider including P+L management, budgeting, secondary spend. Experience of effectively managing a clubs P+L and EBITDA is where we see a lot of candidates come up short. Great fitness leaders are strong in their financial management and commercial acumen, both in executing process and being creative in driving new revenue. 

Great GM’s that I have interviewed and placed are strong in this area and I will be asking questions to candidates are these areas.  The depth and requirements of the question will vary depending on which brand I am recruiting for, but the quality of the answer is very important.

If you are at HOD or Deputy level and you are reading this to understand and develop, this is where your desire to learn and grow needs to kick in. Speak with your current GM and ask to take on extra responsibility (without asking for a pay rise) or set aside a time each week with them to understand how this area of the business works. Yes, this may mean staying an extra hour or add another thing to your every growing to do list but showing this willingness to learn will pay dividends in the long run as this skillset is critical in being a great, effective and successful General, Club or Studio Manager.

Top Tip – speak to your line manager and ask their view of your performance in this area.  Ask for training, leadership or support to take the next step depending on their answer.

Operations

The backbone of any successful club is smooth day to day running of the site.

A strong operational knowledge is certainly required to become a great General Manager and I have always said, you can normally tell within the first 30 seconds of walking into a club if it has a great GM or not. There is a feeling, a look, an atmosphere of a club that has a GM who has created a well-oiled operation!

You will need to be able to spin a lot of plates to ensure your club is operationally sound including health and safety checks, maintenance checks and general day to day processes. If you want to be successful you have to take pride in your club, constantly drive for perfection and be able to see your club as your members do! 

Again, if this an area you’re not the strongest take some time in your club to get to know the inner workings and immerse yourself in the detail of running a site.  If you don’t love this side of things, you need to find a way of embracing it as you are unlikely to reach the ‘great’ status without strong operations.

Top Tip – walk the club 3-4 times a day and speak to members and staff about the club and its operations. The consistency of doing this will deliver to you everything you need to do to ensure a high performing operation.

Service and culture

This is an area that is probably hardest to explain as it’s the least tangible. There aren’t many checklists or KPI’s here other than feedback metrics like NPS scoring.  The idea of “service and culture” is filtered down from the top and in my opinion, is where you can really leave your mark as a GM, in both the club and your team.  

Similar to how I described above, I’m sure you have walked into a club in the past and felt the energy, felt immediately welcome and thought “Wow, this is special”.  If that’s your club, brilliant, if it isn’t, what is it that set these sites apart?

The time of the back office manager is over and has been for a while.  In today’s market operators want GM’s that are going to be the face of the business, walk the gym floor, get to know their members and operate a “my door is always open” policy.  You need to love your club as if it were your own and I promise you, your members will replicate this.

Top Tip: Vision.  What is your’s and your leadership’s vision for your club?  Be really really clear on it and drive the club towards that vision every day.

Network

I read somewhere recently that your network is your ‘net worth’.  Now I’m not sure if I would go that far but I can say my development and the promotions that I received were down to my performance and also the relationships that I built at LA fitness.  I built rapport, trust, credibility and empathy with my leaders and my career took off with their support.

These contacts I still speak to today and are now clients and candidates too. 

Great general managers in the fitness industry are well regarded, well thought of, have support structures and I believe this is an area that has always been the case but is rarely discussed.

Top Tip: Work hard, build genuine connections and deliver what you say you will.  Always strive to improve.

Team Development

Everything you’ve just read isn’t going to be possible without a strong team below you to execute it!  Depending on the size of the club, your team size will vary but one thing is for sure, you’re going need to wear a lot of hats as a leader in the fitness industry.  

As the GM your team will look to you for guidance, motivation and their personal career development. It’s very easy to say you’re a good team leader but a lot harder to demonstrate it. This is an area we pay a lot of attention to when interviewing for GM’s.

Top Tip: The best advice I ever received and that I can pass on now is Read!  There are so many fantastic books, podcasts, audibles that you can utilise to improve in this area.  The books that helped me to get my first GM role were the “one-minute manager” series and most recently “legacy” and “culture code”!  Great books with great messages and I love to keep developing even now and enjoy chatting to candidates about books or training that have developed them.

So, there it is.  Hopefully you are still with me and haven’t clicked off thinking “What’s this fella banging on about”. Hopefully this helps and if you take one thing from this it’ll be worth the time it took to write it. 

Please reach out if you have any questions, I will happily answer them and help where I can.  

I would definitely recommend connecting so you can create a profile and alerts, check out my article here why!

You can also see any current General Manager roles we are recruiting for here.

Thanks again

Tom