Chapter 45
They say that if you are out on the savannah and a lion comes charging at you, you should not move. The lion is faster and hungrier than you, and if you try to run, you will just die exhausted.
The employees at FitFams HQ likely wouldn’t describe their survival strategy with those exact words. But Dee, now storming through the reception area and yelling into her phone, liked to picture her people as fearful prey. When they spotted her, they stood stock-still, tensing every muscle and waiting, hoping to be spared, but not optimistic.
“I hear you, George! OK, OK, we’re going to work on it!” Dee shouted, then snapped her fingers at Sheldon and whisper-screamed for him to get her the financials for Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Miami. “Yes, I know! We are very appreciative of all you have done for us. Now you need to let me run my company.”
She stomped into the main area of the office, and yelled out: “Leadership team, in the conference room, now! And someone bring me a kale smoothie!”
One of the skittish low-level employees whose name Dee hadn’t bothered to learn made a dash for the elevators, then clearly realized the error of her haste — what kind of kale smoothie? From where? Just kale, or fruit too? Did Dee like flax? What size? Oh no oh no oh no — and looked to her fellow giraffes and zebras with pleading eyes.
Dee offered no help. Adversity builds character.
“We are going to make some changes,” Dee told the Leadership Team, now seated around the big white table in the conference room. “First: No more towels in any of our studios. We were paying $1.40 per pound of laundry, and when you’re talking about 20 towels per class and six classes per day at 56 studios, that adds up. Second change: We need to move some coaches around in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Miami.”
Sheldon handed out copies of the financial documents.
“In those markets we … got creative, and opened before we had our business licenses entirely squared away, so we’ve had to pay a few fines,” Dee said. “Normally we’d be able to absorb that, but in those three studios, we’re also paying the coaches too much.”
“Too much?” Jimmy asked. “Don’t you pay them something like $35 a class?”
Dee considered tipping Jimmy over in his pink, guacamole-bowl chair.
“They’re lucky to work for us, and they’re lucky to get paid that much,” Dee said.
Tara and Shelly nodded.
“When I taught at a YMCA they paid me $8,” said Cora, the marketing and communications lead, as she stress-braided her gold hair. Before joining FitFams she was a server at Dee’s favorite bar.
Ben, the former Irish footballer and Adidas model who was now FitFams’ operations lead, laid it out for Jimmy. “When someone starts off as a coach at FitFams, they are paid $10 per class, no matter the class size. After 30 days, if they hit their numbers on attendance, conversion, and retention, they are bumped up to a $15 base per class, or $20 if the class is full. Then they move up to $20 base, $25 full and max out at $30 base, $35 full.”
“Sheldon, explain the rest of it,” Dee commanded.
The long and lean 22-year-old, who performed as Cocoa Pebbles on the city’s drag-brunch circuit on Sundays, coughed self-consciously, clearly unaccustomed to being summoned to speak.
With her eyes Dee reminded him that he was never going to move up in the company if he didn’t grow some balls.
“In most markets there is a lot of turnover at fitness studios, which can be a problem, because they end up with coaches who don’t know the workout, have no following, and need time to train,” he said. “But FitFams is always hosting ‘auditions’ to make sure we have a steady supply of new, fresh, lower-paid people on the coaching rosters.
“While the new coaches are getting accustomed to teaching, the experienced coaches are filling up their classes and building a following,” he continued. “But the following isn’t really for the coach; it’s for the workout, which is the same no matter who teaches it.”
“Kind of like when you get a Big Mac at McDonald’s in Paris,” Jimmy said. “It’s the same as in New Jersey.”
“No, Jimmy. Not like that at all,” snipped Georgina, the branding and merchandising lead who, prior to her hiring at FitFams, was a hand model and Taylor Swift’s favorite front-desk attendant at Body by Bridgitte.
“What we’re going to do in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Miami is take the experienced, higher-paid coaches and move them off of their full classes and into less-popular time slots,” Dee announced. “The new coaches will teach the full, popular classes at lower pay. As soon as those coaches start to get paid too much, we’ll do the same thing again.”
“Won’t the clients be upset that a new coach is taking over an established class?” Jimmy asked. “And what about the experienced coaches? Won’t you risk losing them?”
Tara sighed, not looking up from her phone. “Even if a client says to her favorite coach, ‘OMG, Sally, I can’t believe they’re moving you off this class after you built it up, that’s so unfair, I might boycott,’ the client isn’t going to boycott. By this time she’s addicted to the workout and is worried that if she stops doing it, she’ll turn into Jabba the Hutt. So she’ll stay no matter who is coaching the class.”
“We make coaches feel important and special and part of the team, but they’re not,” Georgina said. “I mean, we don’t want to actively piss them off. But if we happen to push experienced coaches out, so be it.”
“Every coach at FitFams,” Dee said, “is absolutely, 100-percent replaceable.”