All Categories
All Categories
I was standing in the back corner of a studio in Denver, not my studio because I was there helping with a programming audit, when the owner walked in twenty minutes late to her own staff meeting. She had driven forty minutes to get there. Her second location had opened eight weeks earlier and she had not slept a full night since. The coaches at the new spot were running intake calls differently than the original team. No one agreed on when to push a client toward a program upgrade. One coach had already quit because she did not know what progression was supposed to look like after month three. The owner had all of this in her head and none of it on paper.
She was not behind because she worked too little. She was behind because she had scaled the space before she scaled the system.
If you are reading this in the month before you sign a second lease or hire your fifth coach, pause with me. Just long enough to ask a real question: what would happen to your business tomorrow if you could not answer your phone for two weeks? If the answer is things would fall apart, that is not a staffing problem. It is a documentation problem. And it is entirely fixable before you add a single square foot.
The strongest multi-location operators in fitness right now are not the ones with the best programming or the most talented coaches. They are the ones who codified the right things at the right time. This is what they built before they moved.
Many operators treat their first location as proof of concept and their second as duplication. The assumption is that if it worked once, it will work again. What that logic misses is that the first location worked largely because you were there. Your presence filled the gaps. Your judgment made the calls. Your muscle memory ran the intake. The second location does not get your presence in the same way. It gets your documentation. And if that documentation does not exist, it gets chaos instead.
What the strongest operators codify before they scale comes down to five components. Not brand decks. Not vision statements. Actual operating infrastructure. The coaches at your second location should be able to open the folder on day one and know exactly what to do.
Gina Russo opened her second Lagree studio in Chicago in 2022 after running her Wicker Park location for four years. Before she interviewed a single person for the new spot, she built a scoring rubric that weighted four qualities: coachability under feedback, capacity to hold a room of twelve different bodies at once, comfort with the business conversation during renewal, and personal fitness investment. Each quality had a 1-to-5 scale with specific behavioral indicators at every number.
“The rubric did not tell me who to hire. It told me who not to hire. The ones I would have second-guessed myself on, the rubric made the answer obvious.”
— Gina Russo
Her turnover at the second location in year one was one coach out of six. Industry average for new fitness studios runs closer to 40 percent in the first twelve months.
Build your rubric around what your best current coach actually does. Watch them for a week. Write down the specific behaviors. Those behaviors become your 5-level benchmarks. The honest tradeoff is that a rubric slows down the hire by about thirty minutes per candidate. But it removes months of remediation on the back end when the wrong hire is already embedded in your team.
When Derek Huang brought his second HIIT studio online in Austin, he noticed something he had not expected. His coaches at the new location were spending between six and nine hours per week writing sessions from scratch. His original team spent about two. The gap was not talent. It was access. His original team had four years of programming files they had quietly been sharing in a group text. None of it was organized, but they could find it. The new team started at zero.
Huang spent three weeks before opening building what he now calls his programming library: a folder structure with 90 days of session templates organized by equipment, energy system, and training block phase. Every template included coaching cues written out in full. One cue embedded in a tempo interval block reads: “Tell them where they are in the session. Two more sets on this side, then we flip and you are on the back half.” His coaches at location two were delivering consistent sessions by week three.
The library does not replace coach creativity. That is the version of this conversation worth having honestly. Your best coaches will always evolve the programming. But the library gives newer coaches a floor to stand on while they find their voice.
Intake is where studios lose clients. The first call, the first session, the first check-in: these are the three moments where a new member is deciding whether this place is actually for them. In a single-location studio, that process is carried by one or two people who do it instinctively. In a multi-location operation, instinct does not travel.
The operators who scale well write out every step of the intake workflow as a decision tree, not a script. A decision tree maps what happens when the client says yes and what happens when they say no. It covers the first call structure, the welcome session format, the 30-day check-in trigger, and the 90-day renewal conversation opener. Gina Russo’s intake doc runs to four pages. She said it felt excessive until a coach at location two ran renewal calls with three clients in the same week and converted all three. That had never happened in a single week at her original location.
The workflow does not guarantee retention. What it does is remove the decision fatigue that causes coaches to skip the check-in call because they are not sure what to say on it.
The question every coach at your second location will eventually ask is where do I go from here. If you do not have an answer, the answer becomes somewhere else.
A coach development ladder does not need to be complex. It needs to be real. Four levels works for most studios: apprentice, associate, senior, and lead. Each level has named responsibilities, a compensation range, and specific skill milestones required to advance. The milestones should be behavioral, not time-based. Not after one year but after demonstrating consistent form correction across a beginner group session as observed by a senior coach. Derek Huang’s ladder includes a programming contribution requirement at the senior level. Coaches who reach senior status submit two new session templates to the library per month. That one mechanism has kept his library current without it becoming his job.
The ladder is also a retention tool. Coaches who know where they are and what the next step looks like stay longer. That is not motivational language. It is what the retention data at these studios actually shows — and it is what multi-location operators like Absolute Recomp have used to keep more than 150 team members in the business across five locations.
Every studio owner knows their revenue number. Almost none of them know their 90-day retention rate by coach. That gap is where most scaling problems originate.
“What I’ve shared with my teams is that my favorite customer acquisition strategy is retention. What keeps retention top-of-mind is that my coaches actually track when our members hit certain milestones based on the number of sessions our members complete. Naturally, this creates healthy competition with our coaches as they then have dialogue amongst themselves about how far along they are able to take their members.”
— Eloiza Tecson, CEO of E20 Training and Lindora Southern California
A retention scorecard tracks three things at the coach level: the percentage of new clients who return for a second session, the percentage still active at 90 days, and the percentage who upgrade or renew at the six-month mark. These numbers tell you which coaches are converting energy into commitment and which are excellent in the room but losing people at the relationship layer.
Build the scorecard before you open location two. If you wait until the second location is live, you will not have baseline data from location one to compare against. You need six months of coach-level retention data from your original studio before you can meaningfully evaluate whether location two is performing or underperforming. Without that baseline, you are managing by feel. And feel does not scale.
Related: Built to Stay — Why Retention Is the Scaling Engine
When these five components exist before the second location opens, something specific happens: the owner stops being the operating system. Coaches make good decisions without a phone call. Intake runs consistently whether you are on-site or not. The scorecard tells you where to spend your attention without you having to guess. You are no longer the roof holding the building up. You become the person who built the building right.
The Denver studio owner from that staff meeting got there, eventually. It took her about eight months and one more coach departure she did not see coming. But she built all five components. When she was ready to open location three, she did not miss a single night of sleep.
Operators who codify their systems are the operators FitHire candidates want to work for. Browse roles at www.fithirebycoach360.com, or post an opening where coaches looking for documented operations and a real development ladder will actually find it.
What is the first thing I should document when scaling a coaching business to a second location?
Start with intake. Most operators assume intake is intuitive, but it is actually a decision tree that lives in one or two people’s heads. Before anything else, write out every step from the first call to the 90-day renewal conversation. Include what a coach should say when a client expresses doubt at the check-in and what the handoff looks like if the coach who ran the intake is unavailable for the 30-day follow-up. Intake is where clients decide whether to stay or quietly stop booking. Getting it on paper removes the variation that kills retention in new locations. A solid intake doc runs three to five pages. If it fits on one, it is not specific enough.
How many coaching business SOPs does a fitness studio need before opening a second location?
Five core documents cover most of what breaks without them: a hiring rubric, a programming library, an intake workflow, a coach development ladder, and a retention scorecard. Beyond those five, more documentation is generally better than less, but those are the ones that directly affect client retention and coach behavior in the first 90 days. A common mistake is spending time on brand materials before the operational documents are finished. The brand attracts clients. The operations keep them. Operators who finish these five before opening report significantly fewer personnel issues in the first six months at the new location.
What does a fitness studio operating system actually look like in practice?
It looks like a coach at your second location opening a shared folder on day one and finding a 90-day session template library, a clear document explaining how to run a renewal conversation, a scoring rubric for self-assessment, and a development ladder showing exactly what advancement looks like. It is not a binder on a shelf. It is a living set of documents coaches reference in their first month without being told to. The practical test is this: if you could not answer your phone for two weeks, would your second location still run correctly? If the answer is no, the operating system is incomplete.
How do I track coach performance across multiple fitness studio locations?
Build a retention scorecard measuring three numbers at the coach level: the percentage of new clients who return for a second session, the percentage still active at 90 days, and the renewal or upgrade rate at six months. Run this monthly for each coach at each location. The 90-day number is usually the most revealing because it captures whether a coach is building real relationships or just delivering technically sound sessions without the connection that keeps clients coming back. Before opening a second location, collect at least six months of this data from your original studio. That baseline is what makes the comparison meaningful. Without it, you are responding to perception instead of information.
About Dr. Erin Nitschke — Dr. Erin Nitschke, NSCA-CPT, NFPT-CPT, ACE Health Coach, ACE-CPT, Fitness Nutrition Specialist, Therapeutic Exercise Specialist, Pn1, FNMS, and DSWI Master Health Coach, is a seasoned college professor in health and human performance. She is a nationally recognized presenter, industry writer for IDEA, NFPT, Fitness Education Online, and Youate.com, and an active member of the ACE Scientific Advisory Panel. With extensive experience in health and exercise science, Erin specializes in holistic, evidence-based approaches to wellness. Her passion lies in empowering individuals to lead healthier, more vibrant lives through personalized coaching. Erin’s philosophy centers on education, accountability, and sustainable behavior change — guiding clients to achieve long-term success in nutrition, fitness, stress management, and overall well-being. To connect with Dr. Nitschke, email her at erinmd03@gmail.com or on Instagram: @nitschkeerin
Powering the Business of Health, Fitness, and Wellness Coaching