How to Build Member Success into the DNA of Your Studio

The success of any boutique fitness studio is intrinsically tied to the success of its members. The absolute key to your studio growth is member success, if your members aren’t getting the results they came for and sharing their experience with their friends and family, then it’s going to be very difficult to see significant growth in your business. What’s the biggest contributor to member success? Your team. The fuel to your growth fire will undoubtedly be empowering your team—your studio manager AND your trainers. When your whole team is on the same page, the energy in your studio becomes kinetic and transfers over to the success of your members.

Enter Vanessa Treasure, currently Lead Coach - Fitness & Performance at the University of Toronto, and formerly Studio Manager at F45 Yorkville.

If there is one person who knows about how to empower a team and build member success into the DNA of a studio, it’s Vanessa. Vanessa oversaw growth at F45 Yorkville from Day 1 to 400+ members and multiple division, regional and national awards, including F45 Yorkville being named F45 Canadian National Champions and a World Champion Finalist in 2018. I had the absolute pleasure of working with Vanessa as a trainer at F45 Yorkville during that time.

If you don’t have the time to read through the full interview, here are the key takeaways:

• Help your staff find their PoG ("pot of gold")
• Think of sales as a byproduct of changing people’s lives
• Personal skills are most important when hiring
• Weekly or bi-weekly staff meetings are critical for team chemistry and growth
• Lead by example, and if you can’t, then hire someone who will
• Trust your team
• Take time to recognize your team publicly
• Look for the “right” members
• Have your trainers take as many classes as they can

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Enjoy the full interview below.

Tessa:

So you’ve been working with teams now for a while—hiring, team-building, engagement, now at U of T and previously at F45 Yorkville— in both contexts, what’s the VT [Vanessa Treasure] secret sauce!?

Vanessa:

Haha—it would have been in more words until recently, but in short, you need to find your staff’s “pot of gold” (PoG). My PoG as Studio Manager, or as Lead Coach at U of T, is that I need to create a space where people participate in meaningful physical activities. 

For my staff, what I ask myself is, “That particular person, what drives them?” For example, one person might see value in seeing physical progress, they want to see a member perform really well or move really well —that’s their PoG. And when I find that out about someone, that’s what I try my best to steer them towards, because then everyone’s winning.

I personally like performance, but also what drives me in my life is how people feel—if I can make you feel like you belong, if I can make you feel like I’m excited to see you, I am genuinely excited to see you, but I need to make sure you know that. So that’s me and then I shift my training or my KPIs for that staff member so that they are looking for their PoG, because my PoG might not be the same as theirs.

Tessa:

Being in a leadership role though, I feel like your PoG influences the team, at least a little bit—I know I felt that when we worked together at F45—that I wanted to make people feel great as well! How do you navigate wanting to set the tone as a leader, but also have people find their own PoG?

Vanessa:

It’s hard to describe because I do that naturally, that is who I am, but at the same time, I know that I’m not a salesperson, I’m in the business of changing people’s lives. I understand that as an owner it can be hard to lead like that when your financial well-being is on the line—that wasn’t the case for me. But, I definitely think one of the biggest things is that, to be that role model, you need to step away from constantly thinking about profit margins, and making money and selling memberships—take that out of the forefront and instead think of sales as a byproduct of what you do and what you present. That was how I was able to maintain feeling genuine—and without a doubt, money was a motivator too, I was laser focused on milestones—but I knew that to get there that money couldn’t be my driving force. Understanding that and coming to terms with that is a really good way to let your true personality shine and connect with people as people and not as commodities. And not everybody has it! Some people are business people through and through and in that case you need someone else who is better at connecting with members to be the face of your studio.

Tessa:

That’s fair, many owners have a different focus that they might not be able to put to the side in that way or be able to turn it on and off and context switch so easily. 

How do you approach the hiring and interviewing process when it comes to looking for key people to complete your team?

Vanessa:

At U of T, I made a point to do group interviews because I am looking for people that can work WITH people—I can’t tell if someone listens to someone else if I’m not evaluating them listening to other people. I can’t see how someone speaks up in a group, I can’t see how someone responds under pressure, it might be different pressure than what they’ll have on the job, but if you get nervous in a group of people and you can’t show me who you are when you need to show me who you are, you may not be my person. I use my experience from F45 and Lululemon as an ambassador still today, because when you walk into those places as a member or a customer, the staff there make you feel like you’re not even shopping or going to workout.

Tessa:

It’s like you’re seeing a friend.

Vanessa:

Exactly! That’s exactly what it is! It’s like you’re seeing a friend. What we often don’t think about when hiring is, what I need is a PERSON, I can teach you how to coach, and in an F45 it’s so regimented, you definitely can teach all of those things, the coaching, the skills, the delivery, but it’s those personal skills that will be the differentiator.

In terms of embedding it into the DNA of the studio, there is a little bit you can do, but I think it’s about picking the right people—and I think you can feel that when they walk in. A lot of training can happen through weekly staff meetings or bi-weekly staff meetings—they help keep your whole team on the same page, the team gets to know each other, they get experience asking questions and contributing their thoughts and they’re connecting with you as the Studio Manager or Owner. That’s one of the biggest things, as well as continuously leading by example.

I can’t stress leading by example enough—if you aren’t the example, and you might not be because as a studio owner it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re the best fitness person and the best role model, it’s ok to recognize that you’re not that person, but then you need to hire someone who is.

Tessa:

100%. It’s so interesting—to exactly what you’re saying—there’s so many things that can be learned on the job, but it takes people being open and willing to do that, and willing to transition into those roles.

Vanessa:

Look for the things you can’t teach. I don’t need to ask you where the patellar tendon insertion point is, 99% of your members will not care about information like that—it’s valuable to know it, you can deliver information from an area of expertise if you do and that is definitely of value—but that doesn’t create a studio community.

Tessa:

Definitely. 

I remember a couple of years ago, pre-COVID-19, when we were open and the studio was firing on all cylinders, I distinctly remember in the span of a week or two, on three different occasions, someone new came in and asked if you were the Owner, which I’m sure happened to you all the time, but someone else during that time also asked our Head Trainer if he was the Owner and someone different also asked me if I was the Owner. To me, having your team feel like they have some ownership over what’s happening day-to-day, I think is such a compelling thing as well. There was a level of transparency and goal setting in what we were doing that kept us all on the same page. I’m curious, in thinking back to that time, how that feeling of accountability was set up, because it was coming through in everything that was happening in the studio, to the point where new people on a trial couldn’t tell the Owner apart from a Trainer.

Vanessa:

For me personally, I felt like I was allowed to run that business. John (Co-Owner) and I were in constant contact—but he gave me a lot of responsibility. I felt like I was a big part of a lot of the decisions and I’m forever grateful for that because I was able to learn so much and execute so much and learn from mistakes. For John and Liz (Co-Owner), I’m so grateful. I feel like they let me run that business even though it was their baby. I really felt so good about that and that made me internalize this place [the studio] as a representation of me.

So exactly to your point, I think John realized he could be out of the studio more at that time and I think that was a smart move—put faith in your people, people like that! Obviously you need to know the right amount, but people feel good when they know “this person trusts me and I can do this and I can make decisions and my judgment is sound”—and I can only speak for myself, but I think a lot of our team felt that way and I think that’s because everyone was involved in the membership sales process and had an understanding, at least a little bit, of more of the business side of things. Again, you have to work to find what motivates certain people, but I definitely feel like John and Liz did a good job of letting us take the reins and lead.

In the evening, you’re there alone, the studio is yours, you’re responsible to lock it up etc. and I think you can also spin things as the Studio Manager that way as well, for example, with studio cleaning. I always framed studio cleaning as part of the member experience, I’m not just asking you to take out the garbage, I’m not just asking you to vacuum—show our members that you care about them, that you want them to have a nice place to train—it’s not that you have to do this task, it’s that this is part of the experience, own it.

Tessa:

Very true!

Vanessa:

Another thing that I’ve been thinking about, going back to when we were talking about interviews, and I think this goes without saying in hiring, but the first time someone shows you who they are, believe them! I had to learn from experiences and I don’t want others to have to learn the hard way, but for example, if someone is not paying attention when others are talking in a group interview or they’re not engaging with the others in the interview, chances are they’re going to do the same thing when I’m expecting them to engage with members coming to the studio or fitness center and I can’t have that!

Tessa:

That makes a lot of sense! 

This is a good transition to talking a little bit about recognition, because of course you might see something in an interview that you know someone may need to work on, but you want to take that chance on them because of a number of other qualities that they’re bringing to the table, how do you let people on your team know that they’re doing a great job?

Vanessa:

One of the things I do with my staff a lot is that when I notice something, I recognize them and I do my best to recognize them publicly—other people need to know how awesome I think you are and how awesome you are and I think that feels good and it can encourage other people as well.

Tessa:

That’s awesome—love it! 

It’s hard to believe how quickly the last four years have gone by. I think a lot of our team found their footing in Toronto, so-to-speak, by having the studio and community be a core part of our everyday lives.

Vanessa:

Ya and that’s exactly it—it was fun! I remember some lit mornings with our members and that’s the thing—John was always really particular about this too—you want a certain type of person in your studio. It can be tempting to try—again if the numbers are always in the forefront of your mind—it can be tempting to try to get everybody, but if you get the “right” people, people that get along with your trainers, that are pumped about your classes, that bring energy into your studio instead of sucking it out, then all of a sudden it’s a group of people that are just...

Tessa:

...having a great time!

Vanessa:

And that’s awesome! That studio is awesome! It should be fun! I think I can confidently say that I never walked into that studio thinking “Why am I here!?” I don’t think in three years I EVER did! And I was doing a lot and needed to take a break, but it was electrifying to walk in there, it really was and that’s a byproduct of all of those things. I mean, why would I go to work on a Saturday!? Haha but I would!

Tessa:

I know right! We would go in and do classes even when we weren’t scheduled to coach on the weekends! We were there every day!

Vanessa:

Ya the team was doing that and it was then so easy to “sell” or to get other people involved because I was fully bought in. People would ask, “What do you do other than F45?” and would assume I did other training, and I would say “All I do is F45, I don’t do anything else, I don’t run after my workout, I come in and do F45 and I do my absolute best and that’s it, 45 minutes of your day!” It’s just such an easy testament to the training.

Tessa:

I think that’s a big part of it too that we didn’t really touch on earlier, but having your trainers actually doing classes, the way that we did it for so long and still do, it’s probably understated, but it’s really big. If your members see how much you believe in what you’re coaching, that “I believe in this so much, that it’s what I do!” then that’s the sale!

Vanessa:

And that’s the thing! You came in here because you’re looking for something, and I have it! You can see it! It sells itself at that point.

Tessa:

Love it! Thanks so much V! We really appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences and all of the lessons you’ve learned with us!

Vanessa:

Of course! Happy to!