Learning to Thrive
On the Learning to Thrive podcast, we share stories, lessons learned, and practical tools to help your business go from surviving to thriving.
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Learning to Thrive
Ep. 186 - School Year Prep That Actually Works : Plan for a Record Breaking Year
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Episode Links:
Ep. 68 - Business Vitals : Creating a Habit of Tracking Metrics That Matter
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Show Notes:
September chaos is optional, but only if you start in July - which is why we’re kicking off our school year prep series in this week’s Learning to Thrive episode. Listen to learn what we use to build a strong fall for our youth sports business, even in a time when families may be cautious with spending.
We start where most people skip: last fall’s business vitals. Enrollment trends, revenue, overhead, staffing capacity, and which classes were waitlisted give you a real baseline, so you’re not pulling goals out of thin air. We also talk through practical ways to grab data fast using tools like JackrabbitClass or iClass Pro, plus what to do if you haven’t been tracking consistently.
From there, we connect the dots between growth and quality. If you’re adding classes, you need staffing lead time, training time, and the confidence to say no to “maybe” candidates. Then we zoom out to operations: schedules, rotations, equipment use, traffic flow, and the ultimate constraint almost nobody plans for, the parking lot. Finally, we dig into fall enrollment marketing and communication: enrollment dates, priority windows for current families, promotions, and messaging that makes your value feel non-negotiable.
If you want a calmer fall and a cleaner launch, hit play, take notes, and build your plan on paper. Subscribe for the rest of our school year prep series!
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Welcome back to Learning to Thrive. I'm Courtney. And I'm Michaela. And today we begin a new theme of the month, which I love because the themes allow us to go deeper into each of the topics and also to really organize ourselves when we're looking at our business, if we continue a pattern and a and a like long-term focus on something, it helps us to really make a big measurable impact versus jumping around. So that is why we're doing the themes. And this week's theme or this month's theme is getting ready for the school year, school year prep. So why are we talking about school year prep in July when we know that school years don't usually start till mid-August or September? Because you have to be prepared, right? So we're go, we're not going for reactive, we're going for proactive. And in order to be proactive, the plans that you have for September need to start being executed essentially in July so we can set you up for success. So it's one of my favorite things. I love, I love a new school year. I love looking, looking, looking to see what we accomplished last year and then looking forward to say, okay, what is it that we want to do differently? What do we want to try? What idea popped up last year that we just didn't have time to execute on? Um, because I think it makes a difference in being able to level up every year and add more value to your customers every year and make sure that you you're never resting on your laurels, so to speak. Like you're never just taking it for granted that yeah, of course, it's August, they'll sign up. No. How are you gonna add more value to them than you did last year?
SPEAKER_02So and in the youth sports industry, yes, we run on a calendar year, but we also very much so run on a school year schedule. There's a big difference, I think, across all sports and all programs if you're working with children for your summer programming versus your school year programming. So, like you said, this kind of gives you the great, a great time to try new things out, to do new goal setting. Even though we're, you know, halfway through the calendar year, we're gearing up for the beginning of the school year.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. There were, but I do have to asterisk this. There was a solid decade where we planned the school year, like by the seat of our pants.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00When it started. Yeah, like we played in the if you're like there, I am just now getting done my summer camp planning. Like, I am not, you're not alone. It takes time to get these systems in place. Don't get down on yourself, but just pick one thing where you're like, yes, I'm in the middle of summer and I'm just keeping my head above water, but I'm just gonna do this one thing to prep for fall, right? Like just take a stand on one thing and energetically that will move you forward to where you want to go. So no, no problem if you're feeling like this is a stretch goal. Yeah. We've been there. Yes, you can do it.
SPEAKER_02So, four-year school year prep, we had a couple things that you need to be doing right now to hopefully set yourself up for a great school year, a record-breaking school. I go, let's go record breaking.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you know why that's that's a good one? Because this is A, not an economy right now that would produce a record-breaking school year. And B, it's not an Olympic year. Right. Right? If this was if this was 2028 and we're like record breaking, that's easy peasy. There's not a lot of necessarily effort that has to go into that. Team USA will do that for you. But you're mid-site Olympic cycle and you're in an economy that is a question mark. And people are very are being very judicious with their money. So you've got to really think about your customers and how how are you adding so much value that they can't say no, even when the economy might be leading them to say no?
SPEAKER_02I guess the one caveat to that is if you have any sort of a soccer program.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's true. You can capitalize on the World Cup right now, but you can for every other sport.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02We're just keep going.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So how do how do we make ourselves relevant and adding so much value that the the the our customers are like, that is not negotiable. It's staying in the budget. All right.
Pull Last Fall’s Business Vitals
SPEAKER_02So step number one. We have looking back to your previous falls business vitals. Okay, now that's assuming we were tracking our business vitals along the way. That's your enrollment, that's your overhead, revenue, staffing, a couple other things. We have a whole episode we can link in the show notes about business vitals specifically and how to track it. If you haven't done it before, or maybe you're like, I'm tracking some stuff, but I don't know if I'm tracking the right stuff. We'll link that episode. But go back and look at what you were doing last fall. Yep. If you've never actually gone back, if you use a system like Jackrabbit or I think, what is it, iClass Pro, you can pull data. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So go back to the room. Jackrabbit does have a report that I I don't know if it's a new report or I just found it. It's like enrollment trends, and it will show you your monthly enrollment from as long as you've had Jackrabbit by location. So like it, that was like we we track ours on Excel sheets anyway, but like that data and the Excel sheet data were pretty closely matched. I think there were some nuances in it. But if you if you're like, I've not been tracking my enrollment and you have Jackrabbit, you have at least something, right? And if not, pull your pull your archived classes out, make yourself a spreadsheet. Right? Like the data's there, you can go back and get it. But yeah, get it, get an idea, go back through your calendar, what was happening last year, go back through your events calendar, what events did we do, what was the enrollment for those events so that you know what worked, what didn't work, and then kind of go back and think about what did we want to do last year that we didn't have time for? And can we get one of those things in this year?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So instead of just sitting here being like, all right, what do I want to do this school year and trying to pull a number out of thin air that sounds nice, go back and look at what you did last year or in previous years and then base your goal off of that. So do you want to do 10% better? Do you want to do 20% better than like higher enrollment than the previous, like do your goal setting based off of beating where you were last year.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But also, what do you in each program, what are you going to do differently? You know what I mean? So, like if you look at your ninja numbers, and let's say you had 10 older ninja classes and and five little ninja classes, and the little ninjas were full and waitlisted, and your older ninjas were sometimes full, like they started slow and you know, sometimes they're full or they didn't have wait lists, then that is looking to say, hey, maybe I add two more ninja classes, right? So it you want to grow your enrollment, obviously, you want to grow your revenue, but do it in in areas that your customers are making the demand for so that you're gonna put something on the schedule that actually works.
SPEAKER_02Right. Then once you have that ideal number of students, and you know where they're gonna be, ideally what classes. So, like you said, we're adding two more little ninja classes, or we're adding two more beginner classes, or our middle school, high school really took off last year, we might want to try adding one more because there really seems to be an interest in that.
Staff Early For Strong Classes
SPEAKER_02Once you know how many kids you want to have and where they're gonna be in terms of what classes, then you got to look at your staffing. Like, do you currently have enough staff? If you're adding three classes, do you have the staff for that? Or do we need to look at hiring someone? And if so, let's start that process now. That way we have a few months to find a really, really high quality candidate, bring them on and get them trained so that come September or come school year, whenever that starts for you, they are ready to go teaching strong classes. Yeah. Not hiring them in September and then it takes one or two months to bring them up to speed. Yep. Do it now. That way, come September, everyone is, you know, rocking and rolling and feels comfortable and confident in what they're doing as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because then you're hiring from a place of proactivity and future growth versus a place of desperation. Because when you're hiring on August 15th for September one versus you're hiring on July 15th for September one, your energy is totally different there.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And you can say no to the candidate that you're like, maybe, maybe that they, I mean, they sound okay, but like there's just something, there's just something that's not right. You're more likely to ignore that something on August 15th than July 15th. So looking, you know, putting out, and even putting out, you know, to your customer base or putting out to your social media, hey, we're hiring for fall, right? So that these people also know that they don't necessarily need to start now. If they're ready to start now, I would say bring them on board and get them trained. But if not, then maybe they're look maybe they're coming back to school, you know, if you're in a college town or their kids are going back to school so they are able to teach. So uh put that out there now and save yourself the stress of, oh my gosh, this class has eight kids signed up for it and I have no teacher.
SPEAKER_02Right. Or you also don't want the situation where, okay, you hired someone kind of last minute, you put those extra classes on because you have a goal that you're trying to reach, you fill all those classes, but then the teacher, they're not, you know, a poor teacher because you didn't hire a poor candidate, but they're they're mighty if you waited till the last minute. That's true. That's true. Or they're just they're not fully trained yet, they're not confident yet to teach on their own. And so the classes just aren't as strong as you want them to be. And then the parents are like, because you said the economy's a little bit tighter, we're being very selective in where we spend our money. The parents are not going to want a subpar teacher if they're being selective with their money. Correct.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you yeah, good point. You can't get away with subpar in this economy. Right. Or average. I I don't even think you can get away with average. You have to be above average or better. And your teachers have the the teachers are the key to that. That's why that's why people come, that's why people stay, that's why people leave. Sure coach is on the floor. Um, so yeah, getting getting that, at least knowing what you want to add and how many people that would take, definitely. Might seem early, but it's not.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02All right. So we've got a goal that we're trying to reach. We know how we're gonna get there, what classes we're gonna add or rearrange or whatever. We've looked at our staffing. We're making sure we are hiring our high-quality candidates, giving them time to train and be able to teach those new classes. I
Fix Schedules And Facility Flow
SPEAKER_02would say step number three is to kind of look at the like the logistics of the gym, kind of the more like mechanical workings of the gym. So your schedules, your class schedules, your gym rotations, your equipment use, things like that, so that you can make sure that you are maximizing the square footage that you have and the time that you do business. So if you go back through and you look at something and you think, okay, well, yeah, I have a I have a gap in the five o'clock hour. I could add one class. But if you bump the classes, could you you did like a five and a five thirty or five and a five fifteen start time, could you add two classes? Again, staffing is a constraint. Uh your parking lot is always a constraint.
SPEAKER_00Your parking lot, you guys, we've never found a parking lot big enough. I don't know if we ever will. I don't know if we ever will. I don't know. It's a great problem to have. That that means but it's yeah. We have we have doubled, tripled our parking lot size, and we still have there's still there's still space in the gym to add a five o'clock, but it would be a terrible decision because our customers would be so frustrated. Right. If we added one more. Right. Um also your team. When does your team drop off and pick up? Well, it can you and if you're not having your team drop off and pick up, that is a place where if you're if you're looking at parking lot constraints, having a team drop off and pickup line is a huge benefit to your parking lot. Yeah. Takes a little bit to get it going and to train like the coaches, the parents, the kids of where to be and how to do it. But um, once you do, then the parents just roll up, drop the kid off, roll out, and they don't take up your parking spot, which is awesome. Right. So just take a look at how you're Yeah, and I think I think getting things on paper and and like and this, so, so this whole thing, I would say if you're if you're gonna be the most efficient at your school year prep right now at this time of year, you need to you need to pull about a four-hour chunk of time, two hours, four hours, somewhere there, and maybe multiple, like maybe multiple two-hour blocks of time in a week, and really get into these things and put it on paper, like brainstorm, put it on paper, use your Excel spreadsheet for your schedules, like really truly start to map it out so that you can see what logistically you're doing. Do the math, how many kids are in the building during this hour, that hour, whatever. Like it's it's a it's a lot. It's a whole big system. And if you don't look at it with your whole brain with all the pieces, then what's gonna happen in September is it's you're gonna think it's great, it's gonna be great. And then the one or two sticky pot spots are gonna stick, and you're gonna be like, oh my gosh, I didn't pause to think about X, Y, or Z. So looking at it now, and also bring in your leaders. Don't do it by yourself. Have the program directors look at the that look at this and do their own version of it and bring it to you or bring it to the table. You know, get everybody together, get the people that are just their brains are wired for this, get a couple of the coaches in on this conversation, right? This should be a week to two week long conversation, brainstorming. We're all marinating on this before we actually take action on it, because you want to make sure that you have all of the players involved and all of the perspectives. So I might have a great idea, but my pre-K coach, who's on the floor two nights a week and sees it firsthand, might be like, oh, you can't do that, and here's why. This piece of equipment, you know, this class comes, like, there's just so much you don't necessarily know that making sure that all of the stakeholders are involved in making sure that that what you've got planned is going to work can save you gosh, months, months of pain points on the back end. So doing the prep now and making time for that now, even if it means a little bit of extra time dedicated, I think makes all the difference. And make sure it's on paper, make sure it's shareable, and make sure that you run up past your decision makers and all parties that would be affected by it, or representatives from all parties to be affected by it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the other thing too is if you're the sole person who does the scheduling for all of your programs, all of your classes, all of your competitive groups, and you're staring at who you are on Excel, you know, and you're staring at it for like three hours, you're like, I just can't figure it out. Sometimes also getting a fresh set of eyes. They might see something different, they might see a gap or a hole that you don't see because you've just been you've been staring at something for so long. Yeah. So yeah, absolutely. Group effort. Yep. All right, and our last thing. We've got a plan now, right? You know how many kids you want, you know how many teachers you're gonna need, you know where everyone's gonna be in the building at all times. Or on the field. It's gonna be a good thing. Or on the forest. Yep. And it's it's all gonna flow. It's gonna be great.
Market Fall Enrollment With Intention
SPEAKER_02Now, how many of those students are gonna be new and how are we gonna pull them in? So your next step would be to look at your advertising and get that going again. Get that going now. Let make it known, you know, do you do a fall enrollment date where it opens up to the public and start advertising that date, that time now?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think I think advertising and communication could go hand in hand here. Right. Because you're going to be communicating this stuff to your existing database and you're gonna be trying to bring in new families. So looking at it from both of those perspectives of how can I build up, how can I market essentially to my current clientele? And then also how who am I missing in the market, or who do we need more of beginners, obviously? Like, okay, what are what do they need? What is their so some of this might be paid advertising, some of it might be just within your email database at the email funnel or something like that. Some of it might be your social media, some of it might be posters in your lobby. And so that people can also, you know, or it might be a promotion that's like, you know, have a friend uh enroll by September 1st and we'll get, you know, like mention your name and we'll give you $10 off your tuition. You know, like so you could also do a promotion. So um just making sure that we're all on the same page as far as that advertising piece. It's you're literally marketing it to existing new and maybe even like families that never even consider that they would come.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00You're trying to hit all your groups. All your groups. Yeah. But you need to know what you're offering, right? You need to know what you what do you want them to do. So thinking through where are they and then what do you want, what do you want them to do? I'm thinking of my preschoolers, easiest way to get preschoolers in the door, open gym. Where am I advertising? My open gym, how could I make it enticing? Why would a mom want to come to my open gym or dad? They'd want to come because as the weather gets colder, their kid needs to get their energy out, or they would like to make new friends with other kids their age. They want a low-risk way to try, like, so like, and then gearing your marketing towards that. Solve the problem for your customers and point out why it would add value to them to be coming to your facility.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Whereas like grade school, it might be, you know, you're going to some of the local elementary school, you know, Facebook pages and just reminding people you're there. That might be enough. A short video with, you know, hey guys, we're enrolling, you know, don't miss August 15th. August 15th is our enrollment date. People get up at midnight for yes. Yeah, just like our camps. Yeah. Because we put it out there in July. And we say, mark your calendars. You don't want to get stuck on a wait list, right? FOMO. Like you know, nobody wants to go tell their kid they couldn't get in with their friend Sally to the 515 galaxies, and now they're gonna have to do the 615 galaxies all by themselves. Not no one wants to do that. So they'll put that, they'll put it in their calendar.
Reward Current Families With Priority
SPEAKER_00Um and then for your current people, we we allow on August 1st, we send an email out to our currently enrolled, so our summer enrolls, the people that are still enrolled for summer, and we say to them, go ahead and pick your fall class. Like you're gonna keep, we're gonna keep you where you are now. But if you need to change classes, you have a 15-day priority window essentially to, and it's a it's done, I believe, on a Google form. This is my current class, this is a class I'd want to move to. And then we allow them to pick their fall class, which gives them an incentive to stay enrolled for the summer because they do get an early enrollment period. And it also allows us to get our numbers right so that we take care of the people that are currently in the building before we're adding anybody else. Right.
SPEAKER_02Because that's the other thing you don't want to do or we don't want to do, is someone's been enrolled with us for months and months. They stayed enrolled with us through the summer. Yeah. Then the fall rolls around and they need to change their class, and it's like, oh, sorry.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Hop on the 15 kid wait list, you know, and they're like, but we can't do our day anymore. Oh, well, guess we'll see you whenever your spot opens up. Sad. Yeah. We want to keep those people enrolled happy and where they want to be, and then be able to add in the new enroll as well. Yeah.
Build The Two Week Planning Sprint
SPEAKER_00Okay, so we threw a lot at you. We just want to we want to go back. Because it because it can be overwhelming. You might want to listen to this twice and and make sure that you're making like a list, a to-do list or something for yourself. But you're gonna go back to what your numbers were, the facts from last year. What what events were you running, what classes were you in, what had a wait list, what was did not have a wait list. If you've got that data stored, you're ahead of the game. If you don't have it already, you're gonna go back to your class management system and you're gonna find the reports. Call JackRabbit if they're very helpful when you do that. Uh, they can also help you, or iClass Pro, I'm sure, is equally helpful. Um, then you're gonna go, okay, if to do what I want to do for this fall, who? So we're this is my who, who do I need to be able to access to be able to do that, right? So we go to staffing, we start advertising for fall staffing now, we start looking for the perfect candidate now. Also look at your current staff. Does anybody want to go full-time or add more hours for the fall? Get those, get your staffing requests from your people now, right? Quick Google form, tell me what you want for fall so that you know where the holes are. Then you're gonna look at your logistics operations, what is happening on the field, what is happening in the gym, how are we rotating, how is the parking lot gonna be? Are there any other teams that I'm, you know, any other organizations for those of you that are out on the field that you're sharing the field with that you've got to coordinate with, figure out the logistics there, and then communication advertising. How are we going to engage current customers, engage old customers who are still on our list but are not enrolled, and then how are we gonna go after new ones? And make that plan, put it on paper because when you sit down to do your very best thinking, you're gonna come up, you're gonna get in the flow, right? You're gonna get into the zone, great things are gonna be flowing, energy is gonna be, you know, there. And so if you don't write it down, as soon as someone comes in and interrupts that energy and it's like, or you go back to regular life, you're gonna forget what you wanted to do. So make sure that you've got it on paper so you can go back to it and that that time is not wasted. You don't have to start over from scratch. You wanna make sure that you're making the most efficient use of your time. But this is going to require a couple of time blocks over the course of two weeks to talk to yourself about it, to talk to your manage your uh CRM, your customer management system about the data, to talk to your staff about what they want to see, to talk to your leaders about where do you think we need to change things, add things, delete things, um, and make sure that you're you're spending that time to get it right so that in October you are living the dream because you planned for the dream in July. And it's and it's working out, and you didn't miss any blind spots.
SPEAKER_02It's a lot of work, but if you do it, if you truly take the time to set yourself up for success, you're it's like the whole saying, like shoot for the stars, or what is it, aim for the moon?
SPEAKER_00Shoot for the moon, and you if you miss at least you'll land among the stars.
SPEAKER_02If you do this work beforehand, you're going to be better off than if you didn't.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Even if you did half of what we just said. Right.
SPEAKER_00A quarter. Right? Like anything is better than nothing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Even if you just picked one thing.
SPEAKER_00And there, you know what? It can succeed without this, right? It can a gym will or a or sports program will run absent this planning. Your experience of it though, your stress level, your frustration level, that's what we're going for, right? We're going to improve the the situation for you and your people so that that everyone has a more peaceful fall, right? Not that you can't do it, but you're gonna do it without chaos, ideally. Right. You're gonna thrive. You're not gonna survive. How about that? All right, everybody. We hope this was helpful and we'll see you in the next episode.