Before It Was Software,
It Was a Gym Floor.

My first job in fitness was answering the phone. During peak hours there'd be three people at the counter, a member with a billing question, and a line ringing so I let it ring, and told myself they'd leave a message. Almost nobody did. They called the next gym on the list. It took me years to understand I was watching revenue walk out through the phone line.

When I ran the club, I owned the numbers so when they dipped, I did what everyone does and spent more on marketing. More leads came in, and the numbers barely moved. The leads were fine; the follow-up wasn't. A lead that came in Saturday night got called Monday afternoon, and by then they'd already joined somewhere else. It isn't a marketing problem. It's a coverage problem – you cannot staff 24 hours a day.

A bigger operation, and the same leaks. Reviews would pile up; I'd block off time to answer them, then the schedule would blow up and that block would disappear. Weeks went by. Meanwhile every prospect was reading those reviews before they ever called – the bad ones sitting there unanswered, looking true, and the good ones sitting there unthanked.

Four years training instructors across the country taught me the part most software companies miss: it doesn't matter how good the program is if the people on the floor can't pick it up quickly and run it without you standing there. What actually works has to be simple enough to hand over not installed and explained.

I stopped running someone else's floor and built my own, co-founding eVOLV. As an employee, a missed call is an annoyance; as an owner, it's rent. We grew eVOLV to 1,500+ members, 50+ trainers, and 200+ classes a week – and the whole time I was doing the jobs no owner has time for, badly, at midnight, because there was nobody else. I watched a list of old leads and former members sit untouched for months. People we'd already paid to acquire, just sitting there.