How Unite Fitness Went From the Owner Answering Every Question to a Team That Runs Itself — With an Operations Manual Built Around Every Role
A studio owner with another full-time job — and the single source of answers for everything
Mara Prendergast owns Unite Fitness, a boutique fitness studio in Colorado. When she came to us, she was holding down two jobs simultaneously: her studio and a separate full-time position. Despite that, her team was regularly coming to her with questions they should have been able to answer themselves — and she was sending multiple Loom videos every day just to keep things moving.
The core problem was clear: everything lived with Mara. There were no documented processes, no role clarity, and no resource the team could go to when they needed guidance. Her instructors were inconsistent in how they ran classes — missing steps, varying in their level of member engagement — and that inconsistency mattered in an upscale studio where the member experience is the product.
Mara's priority coming in was to create the SOPs for a new general manager role she was building — a salaried, full-time position that would take over day-to-day responsibility for sales, HR, operations, and business development. She needed that role documented before it could work. But the real goal was bigger: to build an operations manual comprehensive enough that the whole team could find answers on their own, and Mara could step back from being the one person everything ran through.
A complete operations manual covering every role in the studio — from instructors to management
We built Unite Fitness's full operations manual from scratch in Notion. Every section was built around the specific roles in the business — so each team member has their own hub to work from, and no one has to sift through information that isn't relevant to them.
The manual covers:
The all-staff SOPs hub covers everything that applies to the whole team: the full member journey from intake through nurture and member relations, premier program SOPs for Mara's VIP membership offering, staff relations guidelines, and video tutorials and training roadmaps accessible to everyone.
The office team hub was built for the management-facing roles — member engagement manager, customer service representative, general manager, and studio owner — covering member relations, incoming questions, and anything that comes through at the office level. This is where the general manager SOPs live: a complete documentation of the role Mara was building, covering sales, HR, operations, and business development responsibilities so the person stepping into it has everything they need from day one.
The management hub is accessible only to the general manager and studio owner. It covers meeting agendas, premier program planning and selling, management-specific checklists, templates and forms, and video tutorials for tools like the MindBody app and LoopSpark — the platforms the management team uses daily.
The instructors hub was one of the most important sections of the manual for Mara. Instructor consistency had been a persistent challenge — some steps were being missed, and the level of member engagement varied across classes. We documented the full instructor workflow: what to do before class starts, checking in members, confirming waivers and class sign-ins, engagement practices during class, how to adapt the class to individual members, and how to guide members toward membership. The hub also includes instructor relations guidelines and a dedicated resource library of tutorials built specifically for instructors.
The wall of love section collects member feedback, testimonials, and positive reviews — giving current and new team members a clear sense of what the studio means to its members and what they're working to deliver every class.
New hire onboarding quizzes were built for the whole team — so anyone joining Unite Fitness can verify their understanding of the manual before moving to hands-on work, and Mara doesn't have to be in the room for it.
A team that finds its own answers — and instructors who show up consistent from day one
Every team member at Unite Fitness now has a place to go when a question comes up — without reaching out to Mara. The daily Loom videos have a destination: the manual answers what those videos used to. And with the general manager SOPs fully documented, the role Mara was building has a complete foundation to stand on.
For the instructors specifically, the impact was immediate. Every step of running a class is documented — from the moment before class starts to the member conversations at the end. New instructors can now get up and running in days rather than months, and the standard of service is consistent across the whole team because everyone is working from the same documented expectations.
The member journey — from intake through premier program enrollment — is also fully documented, so member engagement is no longer dependent on whoever happens to be working that day. The processes are in the manual. The team follows them. Mara doesn't have to supervise every step.
Ready to step back from the day-to-day?
We'll build the system that lets your team deliver — without you in the room for every decision.