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 Expert Fireside Chats Archive

Hiring Managers Employee Growth and Development

Organizational Design and Executive Hiring — Fireside Chat with Bill Stauffer

Bill Stauffer

Should you finally hire the executive everyone tells you that you need? This fireside chat with veteran fitness search executive Bill Stauffer (Flatiron Search) breaks down hiring ahead of the curve versus behind it, how to onboard a senior leader without losing your team's trust, and what real compensation packages look like at different revenue levels. Includes concrete guidance on replacing yourself as founder and the most common executive-hiring mistakes operators make.
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Retention Strategies Nurturing Leads and New Clients

Engineering Hospitality: Building a Culture of Excellence That Scales

Matt Lavender

Reception services scored the lowest of any category across 500 mystery-shopped studio visits — quietly costing operators memberships every day. This fireside chat with Fit Guide co-founder Matt Lavender breaks down the "Mind the GAP" framework (genuine interest, anticipatory service, personalization) borrowed from five-star hotels, with real data on what first-timers experience at check-in, mid-class, and departure, plus a rollout plan for training staff one behavior at a time.
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Brand, Social & Website

Using PR to Build Valuation, Not Just Visibility: A Boutique Fitness PR Playbook

Nicole Dunn

Most studio owners think PR just means press hits — but operators who use it well build valuation, credibility, and pricing power instead. This fireside chat with PR agency founder Nicole Dunn (Dunn Pellier Media) walks through the three phases of a studio opening, how to turn a founder's story into a scalable narrative, and real case studies distinguishing a headline-driving exit story from a forgettable press hit.
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Hiring and Training Instructors

Building an Instructor Talent System That Doesn't Depend on the Founder

Marion Roaman

Instructor talent is the hardest constraint to scale past, and it's rarely a hiring problem so much as a systems problem. This fireside chat with Peloton co-founder Marion Roaman covers building leadership within your instructor team, handling poaching without panicking, managing scheduling fairness without playing favorites, and creating a training program that scales your studio's "magic sauce" across locations.
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Increase Profits

Scaling Profitably: Utilization, Churn, and Margin Discipline with Jay Galluzzo

Jay Galluzzo

Revenue cures all ills — but only if you know which levers actually protect margin as you scale. This fireside chat with Flywheel Sports co-founder Jay Galluzzo covers utilization targets by class and day-part, why discounting to enter a new market breaks your model long-term, how to structure manager incentives and weekly reporting, and the real math behind class-pack vs. membership models and private equity readiness.
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Business Growth

What Investors Actually Look for Before a Boutique Fitness Exit or Raise

JuliAnn Burkhardt

Founders often debate franchising versus staying corporate-owned versus self-funding growth — and the data shows corporate-owned exits have produced the largest founder payouts in boutique fitness so far. This fireside chat with Bank of America investment banker JuliAnn Burkhardt breaks down EBITDA multiples by category (boutique, med spa, longevity), what "perception of growth" means to an acquirer, and what founders should be doing now — financial audits, cohort tracking, unit economics — to prepare for a future raise or sale.
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Industry Insights & Reports Finances Increase Profits

Building a Sustainable Boutique Fitness Business: Lessons from SolidCore's CEO on Scale, Private Equity, and What Actually Makes a Studio Last

Bryan Myers

Bryan Myers is the President & CEO of SolidCore — 135 corporate-owned studios across 26 states, four rounds of private equity, and a full sale in late 2024. In this BFS keynote, he covers the frameworks that got SolidCore there: why the industry's boom-bust pattern is its biggest long-term threat, how to build a durable consumer brand (data-driven consumer insight, professional talent, community investment), SolidCore's ClassPass strategy (remnant inventory only; progressive reduction toward zero), the new market expansion model they learned the hard way (the manager must arrive as the clear authority, not a co-learner), what PE investors actually need to see before diligence begins (20–30%+ four-wall margins, capital efficiency, modality durability story, management team), and why new client conversion — not long-term retention — is still SolidCore's hardest problem at scale.
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Business Growth Business Management

Physique 57's Operating Playbook: The Frameworks That Let a Boutique Fitness Business Run Beyond the Founder

Jennifer Maanavi

Jennifer Maanavi co-founded Physique 57 in 2005 — before boutique fitness was a category — and spent 20 years building it into a multi-city, international, and on-demand business. In this session, she walks through the complete operational framework she uses to run it: how vision and core focus become a decision filter (including what to kill — even when it's profitable), the accountability chart that maps every function to one person publicly, the 25-metric weekly scorecard with RAG status, the dedicated weekly problem-solving hour, SOP documentation philosophy, and how 10-year backward planning connects to daily priorities. For operators who want to stop winging it and build a business that runs with their leadership — not their constant presence.
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