Massage Envy Franchising, LLC (MEF, Franchisor) lacks an effective goto market for new multi-unit Massage Envy Franchisees. These are my thoughts on that topic.
2. Company Overview
- We have about 180 employees across six
locations in Oregon.
- Today, The Company’s revenues are primarily
derived from monthly subscriptions.
- The Network’s Plan: build a skincare line of
business (retail and aesthetics) to compliment
the existing subscription massage business
line. Currently at 2% of total revenue, looking
to build this line of business to 8% of total
revenue over a 36 month period.
- Retention: we do better when our members
don’t cancel.
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3. The Problem Statement
Massage Envy Franchising, LLC (MEF,
Franchisor) lacks an effective goto market for
new multi-unit Massage Envy Franchisees (MUF):
- Lack of consistent training / onboarding for MUFs.
- Lack of organizational patterns for scaling from one
location to multiple locations. “Roll your own”
strategies within the network amount to little more
than 1+1 +1 thinking.
- Roles are built horizontally, providing no
opportunities for career tracking, or growth for
tenured managers.
- No inherent economies of scale or efficiencies
when scaling around expenses, include franchising
fees, CapEx or OpEx
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5. Our Approach – Org Design Changes, part one
- New Roles. Creating new roles and career tracking (e.g.
Director of Aesthetics, Director of Guest Services, Director of
Field Marketing) vs. “Business Manager #1, Business Manager
#2, Business Manager #3. Moving from 1 + 1 + 1 Horizontal
Roles to verticalizing across the entire business (not location
specific). This move feeds into systems thinking / Dan Pink
philosophy around employee engagement, purpose, mastery
and autonomy.
- CoreTeam. This is uplift of three front desk associates (FDAs)
per location. We split up the traditional managerial job duties
into three roles (Assistant Clinic Administrator, Member
Concierge, and assistant to the ACA and MC). We provide
identical binders to each location and create ‘daily checklists’
for each member of the core team.
- These two changes created immediate ‘career tracks.’
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6. Our Approach – Org Design Changes, part two
- Elimination of location specific business managers. With an effective core
team and the rollout of verticalized specialists, we will be able to effectively
eliminate the horizonal business manager role or at least reduce it by 50-67%. One
business manager will now oversee two to three locations, because their job
responsibilities have been transferred to the core team. Their job effectively moves
into a quality control, and culture cheerleading role, not a ‘doer’ role. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA
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7. Our Approach – Social / Communication
- Moving from top-down ‘fear based’ culture to nourishment (aka Starbucks)
culture. We’re taking anxiety out of the system.
- Opening communication between locations and between employees.
Introduced Slack/snapchat as a mode of cross-organizational communication. As
a side effect, we’ve effectively eliminated internal emails.
- We recognize every single win on slack. Wins usually come in the form of new
member sign ups, but can also include personal wins.
- Measurement:
- Looking for signals of vulnerability as a means of validation around
connectedness. (see:
https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability/up-next)
- Community engagement from slack.com
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8. Our Approach – Social / Communication
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- Cool Channel
Names
- recognition
- Snap
Integration
- contests
9. New Organizational Design….
General Manager
DirectorofAesthetics&Retail
DirectorofGuestServices
Biz Mgr 02
Location
04 –
Assistant
Biz Mgr
Location
04 –
Member
Concierge
Location
04 –
Junior MC
Location
05 –
Assistant
Biz Mgr
Location
05 –
Member
Concierge
Location
05 Junior
MC
Location
06 –
Assistant
Biz Mgr
Location
06 –
Member
Concierge
Location
06 –
Junior MC
Biz Mgr 01
Location
01 --
Assistant
Biz Mgr
Location
01 --
Member
Concierge
Location
01 -
Junior MC
Location
02 –
Assistant
Biz Mgr
Location
02
Member
Concierge
Location
02 -
Junior MC
Location
03 –
Assistant
Biz Mgr
Location
03 –
Member
Concierge
Location
03 –
Junior MC
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10. Our Approach – Meeting Cadences
- Maniacal focus on prioritization (and
reprioritization) between the Owner and General
Manager on a daily basis.
- Currently doing weekly standups (12 mins, 3
questions) across the entire company using
google hangouts. Need to get to daily’s.
- Bi-Monthly Mgrs meeting
- Monthly extended team meetings
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