EP20: Scaling Consistency Across 3,700 Employees in Fitness

Hi everyone, I'm Rachel Nemeth, CEO and co-founder of Ocas Training. Today on Back to B6, I'm sitting down with Chris Grieby, Chief Operating Officer of VOSA Fitness. I first got to connect with Priss on a panel earlier this year, and it was one of those conversations where I immediately wanted to go deeper. What's interesting about this conversation is, is both fitness and restaurants are built on, frankly, a high turnover front line workforce, delivering a physical experience that has to feel consistent on every visit. What's interesting is that a gym member might show up five times a week, or frequency most restaurants outside of coffee shops can only dream of. That means that the margin for inconsistency is even thinner. The opportunity to build real loyalty through day-to-day execution is even greater. There's a lot that I think both industries can learn from each other, and that's a big part of what this conversation is about. Chris spent his career across the full spectrum of health and fitness, from large format clubs to medically integrated wellness, to national amenity portfolios, and joined VOSA's COO stepping into 70 clubs. I think 3700 frontline employees, mid-expansion, he'll get into that. He's an operator asking the same question. All leaders are asking every day, which is how do you deliver a consistent experience at scale when the people delivering it are changing? Chris, welcome to back to V6. Thank you so much, Rachel. Thanks for having me. Great meeting you earlier this year, and really excited to dig in here on what we're all trying to solve for, which is consistency and member experience, and how we operate that through our frontline team. So great to be here. Awesome. Thanks. We'll introduce yourself a little bit, and then tell us about VOSA. I'm actually specifically curious on what drew you to the role. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So as one of those that have one of the rarities in the industry, we've only been in the industry. So it started my career with large format health clubs, and then grew myself into not only the country club, and as you mentioned, hospital-based fitness centers, amenity management, performance-based fitness centers, and now back to commercial club operations with VOSA. Really, Rachel, what led me back to VOSA in the core of health and fitness was VOSA's mission to have accessible fitness communities that wouldn't have necessarily the opportunity to connect with individuals to help them on their fitness journeys and on their wellness path. So combine that with an incredible space, that we're in within the HVLP market, and expanding beyond that with some of our studio concepts and other offerings that we have combined with, as you mentioned, in the mid '60s, when I first started, we've got 17 clubs that are opening this year and future expansion beyond that. So rapid pace, rapid growth, a highly competitive market, but again, really excited about bringing fitness to the masses within communities that have been underserved in the past. - Yeah. Well, and maybe just for context for our listeners. So from what I understand, the fitness industry went through a pretty significant growth in consolidation phase, post-pandemic. HVLP or high volume low price operators, like VOSA expanded aggressively while the more kind of boutique studios contracted. So this race to add locations created real pressure on the kind of service consistency, that used to be what the trigger was. Is that right? - That's correct, right? And especially as we expand into new markets, predominantly in the Midwest, one is capturing tens of thousands of members, in addition to that, it's finding the quality staff that have the experience in the service level industries to be able to serve our members. So these are all challenging times, see whether it's post-COVID or even before with finding service providers. As we all know in the fitness industry space, group fitness instructors, personal trainers, coaches, we're hit hard during COVID. So we're coming back out of that and we've got great partnerships out there that are helping us support our bench of talent to be able to provide fitness professionals for our clubs and providing an opportunity, as part of our development with our team, is how do we grow internally? How do we take somebody from an MBS will be called our front desk attendant and put them on a direction in the path through training and development to create general managers and beyond for the future? - Well, let's dig into that a little bit. Maybe let's just start with the baseline of like, what does good service actually look like in the health and fitness space? - Yeah, yeah. And you touched on it, Rachel, right? Good service, you know, for us and in the health and fitness say, is pretty simple. It's really members want the basics done consistently well. There are hundreds of opportunities from the time you pull into the parking lot free workout to the time you leave the parking lot to either win or lose at each of those experiences through on the way. So, you know, most of our members aren't coming in for that luxury gym experience, although we have concepts within our clubs that provide that, that they want to improve their life. They're looking to lose weight and feel healthier and relieve stress, build confidence, build strength and what they expect from us is environment where they can focus on that goal without any friction. Whether it's team member operational issues, those types of things. And so for us, it really means three things. It's equipment that works, staff that are welcoming and friendly in a club that's clean and comfortable for the members to achieve their goals and take that one step further towards their fitness journey. So, if those things are all right, the member can focus on their workout instead of thinking about the gym. That's really at our core. So, when we run clubs, we're looking to remove that complexity. We want to ask ourselves through our standards. You know, does the gym work the way the member expects it? Every time. And it's that consistency that we need to nail to build that trust with our members. - Well, and a lot of what you're saying is also that when you came in, you were really trying to kind of simplify. And you also landed on, we've talked about this before, this model of fixed, friendly, clean as Boston and standard. Where did that come from? And why those three words are everything? - Sure, sure. I think it really came from listening to our members. And me, understanding and listening to the industry of that most every complaint that we'll get from a member falls into one of those three categories, right? Is something broken, was someone unfriendly or did not respond to me the way I was expected to be responded to and recognition is key? And then lastly, obviously, is something dirty, right? Table stakes for the health and fitness environment is cleanliness. So, when you step back, those three things are really the most important to all of our members throughout their experience within our facilities. And the fixed, friendly, clean was as simple as that, right? Is the equipment work and issues are getting resolved quickly? Does every member feel acknowledged and welcome as they're coming in and moving throughout our space from a friendliness standpoint and then does the environment feel safe and clean for them to help achieve those goals? So, the standard is simple, the culture becomes clear and then that behavior is consistent. - Do you find that in your experience throughout the fitness industry that you've really, how do I wanna ask this question? I'm trying to ask if you've arrived on these decisions always based on members, but I actually think the broader question is, what kind of decision maker are you? And how do you make decisions, actually? - Yeah, I think it's through the lens of, how do we improve two things? One is, what can we do to remove that friction as an organization to create a better environment for our team members and our members? And that's simple, but not easy, right? So I think for me, the challenge is in a world that is high data, high pace, high velocity, highly competitive, things are changing daily in the health and fitness space and been accelerated post COVID, is how do I realize what dials on that volume knob need to be turned up and can be focused on? And where can we turn down a little bit? And ultimately the goal is, how do I distill all that information down to, what does a team member that might be, their first job in any industry? What matters to them to be able to create a culture that supports them? Obviously the health and fitness environment is great, it's pretty easy connection to be able to say, we make a difference, right? I wake up every day at any level in our organization and we're making the difference in our members and team members lives because we're in health and fitness. People are getting healthier and stronger and being able to do different things on a day-to-day basis. So the impact is there, how do we tap into the impact? How do we minimize all the operational noise that exists out there to really distill it down to what behaviors are we looking for from our team members that they can impact for the members every day and every experience that they have. So the challenge is this great idea of focus not frenzy in my environment, I've led through that philosophy and brought that to Vasa is what do we need to focus on to improve those team members lives which engage the members and they'll improve their life? Well, and I would almost want to start to shift toward the kind of like service people aspect, but I actually want to pause and talk about this fixed friendly clean model clean. because clean always just sounds so simple, right? - Correct. - Talking about, I think your facilities are 60,000 square feet. - So yeah, yeah, 60,000 square feet, two to 3,000 visits a day. I just ran an interesting statistic for a leadership group we had in town this week. And we get the same number of visitors at our clubs collectively each day that magic kingdom and Disney world, animal kingdom and F-Cock get in a single day. So when you think about, it was wild. It was really wild to be able to articulate the amount of traffic that we're getting into clubs. And it isn't, you know, it's not a transaction or I'm coming into a retail area and leaving. We obviously know, it's gritty. People are sweating and you know, there's whites and there's all sorts of great things that we have to contend with, you know, within locker room systems and fitness centers. So being able to manage operationally, the cleanliness of a 60,000 square foot building with that many visits a day absolutely requires kind of focus support systems operational, you know, wherewithal to be able to keep up with that literally 24/7 within our clubs. - And so just to push a little harder on that then, what do you think are the most underrated things or thing that sort of quietly erodes the member experience without anyone really noticing until it's too late? The other things are so physical and visual. But what are the quiet things that just kind of dissolve over time? - Yeah, I think it's making the connections and understanding. As a member engages with the fitness center, the reason why they join might not be the reason why they show up six months or a year or five years from now. You know, the fitness journey like anybody's life is an evolution. And so looking at how do we engage with members and understand, you know, again, there's some great technologies that are helping us do this. Understand where you might hit a plateau, we can track utilization. So all of a sudden, Rachel, you've been, you know, strong user in the first three or four months of the club and something might a life event might happen for you. But how do we know what triggers that we can inject ourselves into in your life? Do you either get you back on track or create an alternate path for you to be able to reengage with us? So I mean, the small things are as, you know, simple again as it sounds. People across generations right now are looking for community. So how do we create a sense of community? You're gonna work out more, you're gonna show up more if you come in with a friend. If you're involved in one of our studio products where you're in with a group and there's an accountability piece, you have a connection with others and we can tap into that to help you improve your health and fitness through accountability. That might be one piece. It might be just as simple as saying, "Hello, when you walk in and smiling "and telling you to have a great day when you leave." Right? I think some of the best interaction is that we see in our clubs are when you come in at 5, 30 in the morning or eight o'clock at night after a long day, it's just making that personal connection. And it's challenging, right? When you have as many members as we have, but it really comes down to our philosophy that every member matters. Rachel, what are you working on? How can I help you today in the club? Who can I connect you with? Whether it's another member or a team member? Do you know we have this new format coming? Something that's gonna re-engage you and help you feel like I'm seeing in a large club like that. So it was, from me, it was something that obviously I learned in my days back in the country club world. Like the difference between the country club and the traditional health club is really all about recognition like country club members and those dying-paying members are, I want to know you. I want to know what your habits are and what your hobbies are and about your family and how I can help support you and be able to bring that into a larger environment and a more scalable environment is critical for us. It's interesting that that, you know, like the era of country club and how it sort of translated into health and fitness today that's really interesting. So one of the things that you and I have talked about is that when you arrived you inherited, you know, what you're calling paralysis by analysis. Just too many reports, too many metrics, too much noise. Some people come in and it's the opposite. It kind of goes either one of the spectrum. You had too much and you really distilled it down to a handful of numbers. You've shared close rate, PT conversion, studio attachment, payroll and NPS. But that's still five things, right? But I'm still curious like, why did you choose those metrics? How did you distill it down to those? - Yeah, it's a great question. And really what I brought into it and kind of my thought process around it was, what can I distill down that are the controllables within the club? There's a lot of obviously outside of us and the lead funnel mix and how you engage with Vasa digitally. But really the behavior, I wanted to get down to what focus for the on the behavior side that we can impact in the club from a frontline team member to a general manager, a district manager that make the most meaningful impact. Not only on the member, but on the business, right? And one of those is closing percentage, which is, you know, it's tracked everywhere and every club I've ever been in. But if somebody has an intent to come in and experience our clubs on a trial pass or just, you know, a walk in or a member referral, what experience can we provide for that individual? And ultimately starting there, like, how can I match our solutions and our, you know, 60,000 square foot facilities with dozens and dozens of solutions in the clubs to help you achieve the goals? How can I distill that down to find out what your why is, what the meaningful connection is and how your why can connect with what we have in the club to get you to the results faster than you could do on your own. That was really it. And the measurable outcome of that is how good are we doing it? How good am I in building a relationship with you, connecting on what you're looking for, how you're going to engage with our facility, and what tools can I throw at you to be able to have you, you know, receive results faster. And the outcome of that is, you know, more conversions on folks that come into our clubs, prospects that come into our clubs to join as members. So that's one example, you know, and you mentioned the other four that we look at. But, you know, before it was, and the other thing that's kind of the obvious statement is, I don't want my general managers or, you know, my sales leads to spend all their time coming through data to find out, to find out what the behavior that needs to be directed into the team. And so being able to do a lot of work to distilling the data that we see on a daily basis that I know as a general manager, if I came in there, my team as a GM would come in there and say, I know, based on the report from yesterday, I need to have a conversation with Steve. Steve, you know, end up having four tours yesterday, but somehow didn't make that connection. Is it the quality of the lead? Is it how he engages on what we call the care and connect piece? Is how I engage with you when you come into the building before I even start the tour? I want to get to know you. Or is it, you know, sales efficacy? Is it overcoming objections? Is it overcoming price or spousal objections? Whatever it might be. So then we can really distill down, you know, the one number will show us what we need to do behaviorally to help that team member improve their skills, to help again engage more members and change more lives. You know, I love that you're taking these metrics and you're basically saying, I don't need for you to be addressed with the metric. I need for you to make with how you respond to it. And I feel like specifically for club managers that has to be so important that they are feeling comfortable, you know, like they aren't hired as strategists. They're hired as people who can create their team. They have a huge operation to manage. And so being able to walk in with the right information for them to say, I need to focus on this today because that YNZ is a really smart model. You know, you talked about training at the start of our conversation. Voss has been using Opus, you know, and actually had used it before you entered the picture. How has training in general kind of differed at Vossa versus other clubs that you've worked at? Like what's the difference that you're seeing and how teams are executing training? Yeah. I think it's a couple of things. One is really the agility, the speed at which we can partner, you know, and our senior director of training and development in her team. Can partner with you and your team on creating tracks and modules that are getting, you know, and we have the proof, right, where that are being more absorbed by the team member? I've been in the industry for over 30 years and we can tell stories of welcome to the club, you're a personal trainer. There's the members. Here's where you sign them up, go get them. And that was really the training. Now we have, you know, such specific kind of bite size trainings that we can work through. Number one, to initiate the onboarding. But really, I think where the importance is, is we can pull those out, we can extract certain things. If we're identifying whether it's an individual or a club that's struggling in a certain area, we can just extract that one training out and be able to work with the leadership team, the training and development team and the onsite team to manage those one or two behaviors that are really going to impact the results. It's not overwhelming, it's not sitting in a room for, five days straight looking at PowerPoint presentations and then checking the box and saying you're certified go. So it's yes, there's the initial but the follow up, the accountability piece and the natability to curate training modules that can really help those individual behaviors in a very short and brief time that are that are instantly doing a lot of things for us, right? We talked about this Rachel a few months ago was, you know, number one is it's proving, you know, the results in the club we're seeing and improve results from a from a membership experience from our metrics that obviously that were that were measuring. But I think more importantly too is it's improving team member retention. We're seeing some significant improvement, you know, like let's just talk about personal trainers because I had a great meeting with my SVP of fitness yesterday around this is, you know, one particular instance as a new personal trainer, there was, you know, over 60 documents that were part of the training, but being able to distill that down and be able to be really concise around what is the day in the life of a personal trainer, what tools exist in the toolbox that we can show you, you know, in this younger culture that has shorter attention span. Again, it's not the hour long videos, it's shorter videos, real life videos of happening in our clubs. And what we're already seeing is an improvement in team member retention and improvement in the revenue that the personal training department is bringing because of the really kind of specific training that we're able to provide now different than where I've been used to in the past. Well, now that we're on the vein of training, I want to talk about you and your personal development because you've led your and your whole career was in the field, VM regional SVP now, COO, but what did that path having started in the field that a corporate track would not have beyond just the obvious, right? I know how to run a studio, but what did it prepare you for? There's so many people who are listening right now who are operators who aspire to X, Y and Z, and also folks who have just gone straight to the C suite path, you know, looking back, is that the path that you desired? Also, you know, yeah, how did it kind of help you and support you with what you're doing today? Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, obviously I could even go back, I started as a personal trainer, right? So a personal trainer back in the 1900s, I like to say, right? So starting, starting back as a personal trainer and understanding, it was kind of the two paths, there was like the personal connection to health and fitness and upgrading lives and then there was obviously the business and professional path of what I wanted to accomplish and they were very parallel. It was, you know, starting as a personal trainer, I could impact that one person or the five people or 10 members that I was working with to help them improve their lives. Then it was a natural progression to become a PT manager. Now you have, you know, kind of that scalability of five to 10 trainers that you're managing and so that, that kind of scaled. So what I, what I started quickly realizing is, is my journey was how do I, how do I impact the lives of more individuals through my sphere of influence? As a personal trainer with 10 clients to now as COO with, you know, over 5,000 employees and, you know, over 800,000 members. So there's an opportunity in that kind of professional and personal path. But I think for me, it's again, always going to bring it back down to that one member matters for me. And anybody in the fitness and like most, most of us in the fitness industry are here because we have a passion for that, both personally and professionally. So tapping into that, I think it, it gives me that lens of I know what the personal trainer, the brand new personal trainer on day one that's coming out of their certification and sees thousands of members on the floor and has been told, okay, let's go build a business like what that feels like to be feel uncomfortable on the floor and, you know, ask members if they need some, some assistance on the floor to build that business. But for me, the biggest lesson was, was really reality. So, you know, in a club as you're an operator, there's, there's nowhere to hide. You know what the locker rooms look like. You know, if the equipment is broken, you can see the team, but being in their shoes at every level of an organization and health and fitness over the last 30 years, you quickly learned that the strategies that I'm coming up with now and that our teams are coming up with now, it really only matters if it works during prime time on a Tuesday when the club is full and you're, and you're operating at the, at the scale that we're operating back and understanding the impact I think of through my lens of being there before, what is this strategic decision? How is that ripple effect down to the organization? What's that 360 view looking like? There's the industry, as we know, moving fast, moving quickly, a ton of trends that are out there. You want to jump on that, but, but would it make sense? Does it make sense for that team member at what time can we institute new processes? Because I've been there, you know, when corporate says, do this and then also there's 10 things that you're doing all in the same month, we understand that that strategy is not going to, going to stick. So it's, my lens now is the decisions that I'm making. Is it going to make it easier for the team member? And is it going to have an instant result for the member experience in a positive way? You have 5,000 young individuals, you know, across multiple skill sets, high turnover, right? And like that philosophy around people development has deep roots in the work that you've done in the past and what you've lived in breathe. But I love that, I love that visual of the fact that none of it actually really matters until like the busy Tuesday night when everything just has to hum so beautifully. Is there a moment when you got people development wrong as an emerging leader? Anything that you look back on and say, man, that mistake or that moment really shaped me into I am, I feel like we all have those. Yeah, yeah, gosh. I think it was so rich. Just a couple. I think there's just just a couple. Let me think about a couple of them, you know, as an emerging leader, you know, kind of in this industry, it's really easy to lose sight of the member, right? I keep going back to that because it's obviously top of mind for me, right? Like at my level and senior leadership team and we talk about, you know, NMUs and LVT and all the numbers and the meat behind that. But for a personal trainer, they just want to share their passion for fitness with that one member. And so I would say where I missed up in the beginning was, okay, here's the number, you know, come heck or high water, you're going to hit that number and kind of coming at it versus that way. And I think what I've learned over the over the decades now is there are still some people that are very driven and very competitive and you can speak to that way. The majority still want to understand the why and the impact. And then if I can bring it back to, we might have an initiative and it's going to be hard and it's going to take a lot of work for us to get aligned. There's going to be trainings, there's going to be follow-up and there's definitely accountability. But this is the difference that it's making and the culture that we're creating is we're not shining away from a performance culture. It is, you know, part part of the red thread, you know, through Vasa as we are a performance culture, but the culture is about winning. And what does winning mean to you? And so winning might mean I'm going to have more money in my checkbook so I can support my family or grow my career or you know, buy fun toys. Winning might also mean I'm going to impact more lives if you know, through my, you know, kind of my experience of I'm a personal trainer, a lead, I'm a general manager with these like the influence that you can have or maybe winning is if I can follow this strategy and run these plays and create a culture of winning and supportive environment, I can then move up and support more of those leaders that have that similar philosophy. So I think again, the lessons that I've learned is being able to just uniquely identify what motivates people at all levels and tap into that, tap into their why, like we do with the members, like why are you here? Why are you a personal trainer? Why do you love teaching Zumba on this Saturday morning, you know, in front of 60 people? What is it about that and be able just to find and highlight that strength? And then everybody has opportunities and how quickly we can identify those opportunities to progress them into better leaders. And we do an exceptional job at doing both, tapping into strengths, identifying those blind spots and being able to produce talent, you know, within our organization or if they grow out of our organization where they're going to be more successful in the data started. You know, it reminds me of my favorite interview question. Why do you get out of bed in the morning? Yeah. It's so much richer than why do you want to work here? And I think that also just in the vein of people development, I think that gets missed a lot too. We're training people that we need to tell them why we're training them on these things and I think it's a long day, but it's so important. Yeah. Last question before we get into the lightning round. When you look back at the leaders who shaped you and how you operate today, who was that? And what did they teach you that you still use? That used names. I'd love to use names. So Mr. Joe Goddough, he was he was my general manager at the Pacific Club in Newport Beach. He's reached He's retiring this month after decades of service there. He's an old club corp guy and so very strong in the service industry and the country club environment and the two things that I take from him in the really one, which is number one is recognition. People pay to be a member, to be recognized. That is critical to build the personal connections. Number two is membership is king. And that was an old club corp that he brought into me is like revenue cures all members were king. And his style, I think he did a phenomenal job at teaching me at a very young age. I think it was a fitness director at the Pacific club and I was younger than all of my staff and I'm dealing with with extraordinarily impressive and wealthy and intelligent members that we were supporting in that high club environment. So he really taught me how to engage with members at all socioeconomic levels and then in turn be able to be able to coach our team to support those members. So they had a wonderful experience that home away from home in the country club environment. So Joe is an amazing mentor of mine and still is to this day and he just taught me so much to like, you know, how to connect, you know, the personal connection with some member but also, you know, the results matter. - I feel like you talked to anyone who's in an executive position today. They will all say that there's some GM who shaped who they are. It's such an important role. I have that person too and we all know it, but then, but it really comes into practice as you get older. These are the, you know, your brain is so mushy when you're young. And as it's, you know, the veins are hardening and all of that, those moments with your leaders and watching how they're leading with so few resources is really critical. - My CEO Rich, you know, now always talks about, you know, go back in time. There's always that one person where you feel like they took a chance on you and look at what that did. And so now it's now I looked for those. Like those are the moments that I live for when I go into the club. It's like who's that next regional, that next VP? Like who can we lean into and help develop to believe in them to get to a level that they never thought they would be? I love it. Yeah. - Well, Chris, it's been a total pleasure as back to basic tradition remains. We are gonna end the lightning round. I'm gonna ask you questions and answer them as quickly and as briefly as you can to leave our listeners and total mystery about who you are. So to start, what fitness trend are you completely over? - Wow. Oh my gosh. That's so hard, Rachel, that I'm completely over. Endor cycle, I'll just say it. Let's do it. - The next is the opposite. What fitness trend are you most excited about that you think is underrated today? - Strength, strength, strength and strength. Powerlifting, strength, super excited that is back. Better than ever. - If you weren't in the fitness industry, what industry would you be in? - Landscape architecture. - Wow, I did not see that thing. - I know, I know you didn't. I know you didn't. I love it. I love the outdoors. I love fixing things, pre-opposed, the evolution of that. Yep, that'll be it. - What's the last book that you read? - I have a tendency, I juggle 10 books at a time. So that's kind of my thing. So everything from fly fishing to business to just brain stuff. I just finished dark matter. So that was really cool. So I just finished it. - What are you going back to basics on personally? - Routine, that's where I'm going back to basics. Right? The role is intense, time is everything. And if I don't take care of myself and practice what I preach, it's all gonna unravel. So back to basics with my own health and fitness journey. - And last question, if you could give your 25 year old self one piece of advice, what would it be? - Read more books. (laughing) - The information is out there. Information and apply. Information, like I'll read a book. We talked about this and trying to take everything from it. If you can just take one or two things from one thing, how'd I done that back 25? Again, similar analogy to fitness. Just take that first step, but just read more books. - Chris, total pleasure talking with you always. Thank you so, so much for joining us. I appreciate it. - Thank you so much Rachel. always talk to you soon.