How We Pay Our Coaches

CrossFit NYC is in the coaching business. Our coaches are our product. We compete for coaches, not only with other affiliates, but also with other sources of employment. We’ve had several people give up high-paying jobs to coach for us. In order to keep good people, we need to make it worth their while to be here—and we do.

A part-time coach starts at $25 per hour, and shortly after making it to twenty hours per week (usually over two to four months) goes to $30 per hour. Our top rate is about $50 per hour. An average coach works 22 hours per week for about $40 per hour. Taxes and benefits for coaches cost us about $12 per hour. We pay everything on the books. All our coaches are employees, no independent contractors, no 1099’s.

We maintain a separate checking account to cover payroll, so there is zero chance of a check bouncing. We outsource our payroll, so that all taxes are filed correctly and on time. Meeting payroll is our number one priority. Everyone gets paid on time each week via direct deposit.

New York City has a sick-time policy that mandates one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked to a maximum of 40 hours for an employee who works 1200 hours in a year. We improved on the system, with no upper bound on time-off earned. For employees who have been with us two years or longer, we give one paid hour off for every 20 hours worked.

We offer medical to coaches who work 20 hours per week and to administrative people who work 35 hours or more per week. We pay the first $400 per month on policies that cost about $750 per month, so the weekly copay for the employee is about $75.

Overall, it costs us just over $50 per class for the coach and an additional $20 per class hour for administrative overhead (head coach, operations manager, customer service manager, Front Desk personnel, etc.) Our goal is to keep payroll expenses below $75 per member per month.

When it comes to personal training, we borrowed a page from Greg Glassman’s “least rents” model. We take next to nothing from our coaches who train personal clients. Its money we leave on the table. CrossFit NYC is not in the personal training business. We have conceded that market to our coaches as either their primary or their secondary source of income (their choice). CrossFit NYC is strictly in the business of running group classes, about 360 classes per week. (We are also not in the business of renting our facilities to people who want “Open Gym” memberships.)

A full-time coach at CrossFit NYC (20 hours or more of scheduled classes) pays us $2.50 per hour per private client. A part-time coach pays $5 per hour per client. The charge is mainly to insure that there is a process in place. Private clients check in at the Front Desk, so we can make sure they have a waiver on file; and they sign a logbook, so we have a record in case of an incident. Beyond that, private clients pay their coaches directly.  Starting this year, we will require that anyone doing private training have a separate personal policy with the CrossFit Risk Retention Group.

At the high end, we have a coach who teaches five classes per day, two days per week, and gets paid an additional weekly salary to manage our mentee program. Along with our head coach, she acts as the gatekeeper for new hires. She has maybe twenty five personal client hours per week, for which she pays us about $60 total. Another senior coach who manages our blog and social media chooses to work a bit under twenty hours over four weekdays. In addition, he gets a salary for his administrative role. Our head coach teaches about fifteen classes per week and gets a separate salary for doing our programming and managing the coaching staff.

We do our best to accommodate our coaches’ preferences for when they want to teach. With the number of classes we run, we can be fairly flexible—to a point. As a general rule, we respect seniority in making scheduling decisions, and our ten most senior coaches pretty much have the exact hours they want. New hires start out taking what we can offer them, fewer hours at first, often on the weekends, gradually more hours. Many senior coaches cut back on their days and hours, so that they can handle more privates, which is where the money is for them. This is fine with us, because it allows newer coaches to gain hours, and it keeps great coaches on our staff.