Running a business is a lot of pleasure but it's also a lot of pain too, in ways that those who have never had their own business will never fully be able to grasp of. A lot of the times Snickers and I get into disagreements about things because we make business personal and thus judgement is somewhat clouded. Feelings override logic, opinions get more priority over facts and statistics, and the line between business and pleasure gets crossed over and crossed out.
People invest in us via signing up and paying their membership dues. They don't sign up because they want to buy a friend. They sign up because they want to hire us as coaches, to learn boxing and weight training from us. The friendship that evolves and personal connections are bonuses and I think too often this is taken for granted and gives a new power to something that is bonus. What I mean is that though we definitely want our members to become comfortable with us and form friendships, the fact of the matter is this is a business and too often this fact is ignored. The purpose all this mumble jumble, well, I'm just going to come out and say it, we've reached an uncomfortable position where we are now having to put an age limit on our membership.
Tonight we went out for dinner and our after dinner plans were instantly shot down with the arrival of one member and their child. Their child was once a member at Hulk's, for just the duration of a month, but is no longer but they felt it OK to bring her to club event. Occasionally some members will bring a friend, that's not an issue, but we've never had a member show up with their little kids.
If this were Canada, it'd be so cut and dry -- children under 16 would have to have parent's consent and be accompanied by an adult. That adult would then be responsible for them, for supervising them. We don't have such a rule here in Korea and thus mini Hulkies have signed up as young as 5 years old. The particular former mini Hulkie I am writing about here is the one 5 year old we have, we had. We have a 6 year old boy who trains at Hulk's and he is quite independent and mature enough to act accordingly. He does his stretching, warms up on the treadmill and then puts on a pair of boxing gloves for boxing. He may be only 1 year older than the 5 year old but the maturity level and level of attention needed are polar opposite. This is not to say our 6 year old mini Hulkie is perfect or doesn't need the occasional reminder to leave other members to their training but he doesn't demand non-stop attention. The 5 year old on the other hand demands our undivided attention as she is full of energy, as most kids naturally are, but she lacks the ability to focus and is all over the place. My argument here is that if this 5 year old child were 15 and getting the same one-to-one attention for how ever long they're at the club each day, it would be considered personal training and thus would come with an extra hourly bill. Don't get me wrong, my issue here isn't not getting paid for the overdose of extra attention she requires, instead it's the fact that it's a no-choice requirement and I don't think that's fair.
We've always maintained the rule that the training floor is for paying members only. It is not for visitors, whether that be strangers off the street or member's friends, to freely entertain themselves on and use the equipment at free will. We extend the use of our pool table, lounge area and juice bar to visitors but not the training floor. Too often we have had young visitors come and horse-play around. It's disrupting and quite frankly, unless they've signed the member consent form, we as a business are not legally protected if they get injured. You want to train at our club and use our facilities, sign the consent form -- no sign no play. This rule worked to keep the young kids from playing on our equipment and getting hurt doing so but then the unexpected happened, a member signed their very young child up.
The problem now is that putting an age limit on membership means losing a few mini-Hulkies, like our 6 year old. He only trains during his summer and winter vacation, none the less such a rule would mean he will not be able to rejoin later. He is mature enough to train at Hulk's but we can't exactly make a maturity rule on our membership, gosh perhaps then even Snickers wouldn't be able to train here. How would you even do that anyways?!
I have always argued for an age restriction from the start and honestly it was never a problem... until it was. And while most members think a small child running around is cute and harmless, I vouch that the club instantly becomes a danger zone for them. The brightly coloured kettlebells always seem to lure them, they always want to hang off our Smith machine, and they always seem to go for the heavy medicine balls on the high shelves, mistaking them for balls to play with and not the weighted balls, ranging from 1kg to 5kg, that they are. I'm not going to kid-proof our boxing club because this is not a glorified daycare and I refuse to be a glorified babysitter. Moreover, it's distracting and disturbing to all present in the club. There are too many issues attached to having such young children training at our club so I much rather just nip it in the butt with an age restriction.
Whether I like kids or not is irrelevant here but for arguments sake I happen to like kids, it's babies that freak me out. Moreover this new rule isn't just because of this extra young member, don't get me wrong. It's not a personal attack or solely directed towards her or about her. We just honestly never thought we'd get such young members to tell you the truth but then it happened and then the members enlisting just kept on getting younger and younger. It's nothing personal, it's business and the issue is that I don't think it's appropriate for such young children to be allowed to train at our boxing club and I don't think it is appropriate for them to come to club events. But now the problem is how do you start to let this new rule be known without people being offended?! Exactly. There's the pain in this pleasure I call my business.
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