Who Should You Hire First in Your Fitness or Wellness Business?

If you own a Pilates studio, PT practice, boutique fitness business, or wellness company, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve asked yourself this question:

Who should I hire first?

An admin person? Another instructor? A PT? A studio manager? Someone to take social media off your plate?

And usually, by the time you’re seriously asking the question, you’re already overwhelmed.

Your schedule is full. You’re answering emails between clients. Someone called off. There’s a lead you forgot to follow up with. Payroll is due. And suddenly hiring anyone feels like it would make your life easier.

This is exactly when we tend to make bad hiring decisions.

It’s basically the business-owner version of grocery shopping when you’re starving. Everything looks like a good idea.

Instead of asking, “Who should I hire?” I want you to ask a different question:

“Which seat in my business do I need to get out of?”

That one question can completely change the way you hire.

Stop Building Jobs Around People

One of the biggest mistakes I see small business owners make—and yes, I made this mistake too—is finding someone we like and then figuring out what job we can give them.

Maybe you have an amazing instructor who’s been with you forever, so you think, She should be the manager.

Maybe your front desk person has an extra five hours a week, so you decide she can take over social media.

Or maybe one of your clients loves the studio and wants to barter some classes for helping at the front desk.

It sounds convenient.

Until it isn’t.

Because being a fantastic Pilates instructor does not automatically mean someone knows how to manage people.

Having five extra hours in the week doesn’t mean someone understands marketing.

And being a wonderful client who loves your business doesn’t necessarily mean someone knows how to manage leads, protect your schedule, enforce cancellation policies, or handle uncomfortable customer conversations.

You can have a really great person sitting in completely the wrong seat.

And eventually, both of you end up frustrated.

This Is Why I Prefer an Accountability Chart

Most of us have heard of an organizational chart. It tells you who reports to whom.

An accountability chart is different.

Instead of being built around people, it’s built around the functions your business needs.

At the top, you have the CEO or visionary.

Underneath that, almost every business has some version of three major functions:

Operations. Finance. Sales and marketing.

Then underneath those functions you have the people actually delivering the service and supporting the client experience; your instructors, practitioners, administrators, customer support team, and so on.

Now, if you’re thinking, Christa, I don't have all those people, neither did I.

In the beginning, you are all those people.

You’re the CEO.

You’re probably running operations.

You’re doing sales.

You’re approving the marketing.

You’re watching the money.

You may also be teaching classes, treating patients, answering phones, scheduling clients, cleaning the studio, and figuring out why the toilet won't stop running.

One person can sit in multiple seats.

But every seat should have one person who ultimately owns it.

And that’s where hiring starts to become much clearer.

Which Seat Do You Want to Get Out Of?

Instead of automatically assuming you need the cheapest hire you can find, look at where your time is currently going.

If you’re spending 20 hours a week teaching classes or treating patients and you know those 20 hours could be spent growing the business, maybe your next hire is another practitioner or instructor.

If you’re spending hours answering phones, scheduling clients, following up on leads, chasing payments, and dealing with cancellations, and you could spend that time providing a $250 service, then hiring an administrator may make much more financial sense.

Maybe you’re fine continuing to treat or teach, but you’re tired of having every employee problem come directly to you. You don't want to manage schedules, run staff meetings, build SOPs, handle call-offs, and put out fires anymore.

Maybe that’s the seat you need to fill.

And maybe what you actually need is an experienced operations or studio manager.

The point is, your first hire isn't automatically an admin person because they're less expensive.

The better question is:

Which hire gives me back the highest-value hours and helps bridge the gap between where my business is today and where I want it to go?

Before You Post the Job, Define What They Own

Here’s another rule I wish someone had given me much earlier:

If you cannot clearly explain in one sentence what this person is responsible for producing, you are not ready to hire them.

We tend to write job descriptions around tasks.

Answer the phone.

Respond to emails.

Run staff meetings.

Teach classes.

Follow up with leads.

But tasks aren't the same thing as ownership.

For example, an administrator isn't simply responsible for answering the phone.

They might be responsible for owning the client experience outside of the actual session.

Now we can define what that means: maintaining the schedule, handling cancellations and waitlists, responding to inquiries, supporting lead follow-up, managing customer service issues, and helping maintain your target utilization.

An instructor or practitioner isn't simply responsible for showing up and teaching.

They own the delivery of the client experience you're selling. That means following your standards and protocols, delivering a high-quality session, and helping clients achieve the outcomes you've promised.

And a manager?

This is where I see a LOT of confusion.

Your Best Instructor Isn't Automatically Your Best Manager

I did this.

I had great clinicians and instructors and thought, They’re fantastic at their job. They should manage.

Except managing requires an entirely different skill set.

A manager has to lead people.

They have to hold people accountable.

They have to have uncomfortable conversations.

They need to understand systems and processes.

They need to recognize a problem, figure out why it’s happening, and ideally bring you a solution instead of simply dropping another problem on your desk.

The role of your operations person or manager should essentially be:

Take the CEO’s vision and turn it into a business that runs day-to-day without the CEO having to be in the room.

That's very different from being a great instructor.

And sometimes the right person for that job is already on your team.

Sometimes they aren't.

Here’s What a Great Manager Actually Looks Like

Imagine the air conditioning goes out at your studio in the middle of summer.

Without the right systems and accountability, here's what usually happens:

Someone eventually realizes it's broken.

Someone texts you:

“The AC isn't working.”

And congratulations, you now own the problem.

You have to find the HVAC company, make the call, figure out when someone can get there, decide whether classes need to be canceled, communicate with clients, coordinate who can meet the repair person, and rearrange your entire day.

That isn't really having a manager.

A capable operations manager handles it differently.

They find out the AC is broken. They contact the appropriate company. They coordinate access to the building. They make the call about whether a class needs to be canceled according to the authority and systems you've already established. They make sure clients and instructors are notified.

Then they send you something like:

“Just keeping you updated, the AC went out this morning. HVAC will be here at 3:00. We canceled the 5:00 class as a precaution and notified everyone. We expect to be back to normal tomorrow. I'll let you know if anything changes.”

And you give it a thumbs-up.

That's it.

That's what ownership of a seat looks like.

The problem didn't get handed to you. It got handled.

Right Person. Right Seat.

There are really two pieces to getting hiring right.

First, you need the right person.

They fit your mission, vision, values, and culture. They believe in where you're going and how you want to get there.

But then you need that person in the right seat.

Do they actually have the skills, temperament, experience, and capacity to produce the outcomes this role requires?

You can absolutely have the right person in the wrong seat.

And when that happens, it doesn't mean they're a bad employee.

It may simply mean you asked them to succeed at a job they weren't equipped or didn't even want to do.

So...Who Should You Hire First?

There isn't one answer.

And that's really the point.

Your first hire shouldn't be based on what another studio owner hired first.

It shouldn't automatically be the least expensive employee.

And it definitely shouldn't be, “I met this amazing person and I'm sure I'll figure out something for her to do.”

Map out the seats your business actually needs.

Write down the three to five outcomes each seat owns.

Look at all the seats you're currently sitting in.

Then ask yourself:

Which seat, if I could get out of it today, would create the most value for this business?

That's probably where you need to hire.

Because the goal isn't simply to get more people on payroll.

The goal is to build a business where the right people own the right outcomes and where everything doesn't eventually find its way back to you.

If you want to go deeper into this, I walk through the accountability chart visually in this episode of the Female Empowered Podcast, so I highly recommend watching the YouTube version if you want to see exactly how I map the different seats in a business.

And if you're ready to build this structure inside your own business, this is one of the very first things we work through inside the Fit Biz Accelerator. We don't just decide that you “need a manager” or “need some help.” We define exactly what your business needs, what each role owns, and what kind of person you actually need sitting in that seat.

The next Accelerator cohort begins in January 2027, with enrollment opening in December. You can visit christagurka.com/accelerator to get on the waitlist.