Episode 310: Avoiding HR Headaches: Scheduling Do’s and Don’ts for Boutique Fitness Studios with HR Expert Katie Santos

Confused about whether your team should be classified as employees or independent contractors? You’re not alone — and getting it wrong can cost you big time. In this episode of Female emPOWERED, host Christa Gurka sits down with returning guest Katie Santos, founder of FitnessHR, to unpack everything studio and wellness business owners need to know about HR compliance, classification, and protecting your business.

Together, Christa and Katie break down real-world examples from Pilates, yoga, and physical therapy studios, explain what the IRS and state laws actually look for, and share actionable steps to help you stay compliant and build a more sustainable, professional team.

Whether you’re in Florida’s “Wild West” of HR or strict-law California, this episode will help you understand:
 ✅ The legal difference between an independent contractor and an employee
 ✅ How misclassification can trigger audits, lawsuits, and major financial risk
 ✅ What you can (and can’t) require contractors to do
 ✅ Why switching to employees can actually increase your studio’s value
✅ What to include in your employee handbook and operations manual
✅ End-of-year HR to-dos: reviews, time-off policies, and pay structures
✅ How to set expectations clearly without losing your “cool boss” vibe

If you want to protect your business, lead with confidence, and ensure your HR foundation supports your growth — this episode is a must-listen.

 🔗 Learn more about Katie Santos: fitnesshr.com

🔗 Explore Fit Biz Strategies: christagurka.com

Transcript

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 0:51

Hey there everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Female Empowered Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Gurka, and I have another guest episode today, a returning guest, actually, Katie Santos, from Fitness hr, who's been on the podcast before. She is actually a really, unique expert, I would say, because she worked in this industry for so long. So Katie and I met. don't even wanna know how long I, I, it's always pre COVID, post COVID, but pre COVID PMA, the Pilates Method Alliance, years and years. She had a very successful studio for many years in California. and then she has all sorts of stuff, becoming more and more of an expert in, in HR and how to help with hr. Capabilities and our boutique fitness brands. And so I brought her on today to talk about, mostly about contractors versus employees. So if you hear that and you're automatically I would, I don't wanna listen to this anymore, be I encourage you not to hit stop because this is really, really, really, really important stuff. And we're gonna talk about very. very actionable things that people can do and things that happen in our businesses all the time that we just are whoa, what do I do in this situation? So thank you Katie for being here. Would you take a moment and just kind of give people a little bit about your history and how you came to do what you're currently doing.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 2:22

Sure. Thanks for having me again, Krista, it's always so good to talk with you, especially with your breadth of knowledge and I love bounce. Ideas off of you and working together.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 2:32

here.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 2:32

Awesome.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 2:33

have you back.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 2:34

Yeah. Thank you. so I started in this business in 1982 when I was four. Not really. teaching aerobics on a concrete floor with no shoes and all that crazy stuff. So I've. I've looked at, running different kinds of teams and clubs and in small boutiques. And then finally my own. I had a little left turn into construction and into re restaurant work. So I got familiar with running teams in both of those areas. That's fun. but I, my passion has always been to enable people to move better, and even though now I don't have a studio anymore. I'm doing that by helping studio owners with primarily HR and leadership, but also, how do I set up my pricing so I can afford to have employees? How do I tackle the hard conversations that I might have between an employee or a contractor, things like that, to get them to do what I. Want them to do and expect them to do. And then also, where's the line, right? Where, where can I tell people to do things and where do I have to be quiet and just pray for the best. So

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 3:43

Yeah.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 3:44

my two partners and I in early two thousands realized that while the laws weren't really against what we were doing with independent contractors, there was two main things. Number one. I didn't wanna look out my office window and go, oh my gosh, what is that person teaching my client over there? It scares me.'cause I wanted to be able to control what they were doing or we did. And then secondly, we had a very big studio near us get audited who had contractors and they said, yeah, all good. We passed the audit, but it cost us$60,000 to defend it. I'm like. Oh no, we're gonna do employees. And so we set ourselves up. It took about six months to plan for that, but we set ourselves up to have employees and it was the best decision we made. Even now, five years past being closed, we still connect with our team. they're always asking for advice and questions and, celebrating wins with each other. So anyway, there's that.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 4:47

Yeah, it's, say that to people too, where it's like. You could win the, you could win the lawsuit or the audit, but it. Could again, just like the cost of it could take you under.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 4:59

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 5:00

really sad. It's really sad when businesses are sued have an audit and they win and they still, they just can't afford to operate anymore. That's really sad, but it's also sad when businesses lose I almost had this situation happen to me where. Somebody on my team was attempting to bring a lawsuit and get the staff to come with her to bring a lawsuit. And I will say, I would have lost, I

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 5:23

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 5:24

and did not do any of that intentionally. Like I wasn't specifically trying to do fraud or something wrong. I just kind of stuck my head in the sand and had so many things going on that I was like, I just, I don't this, I don't know. This is how we do it. Right. So. It was a big learning curve and I think the universe kind of smiled down me, on me that day. Even though it was a really hard situation to go through, I was able to turn it around and having, employees and structure and HR manuals and SOPs was like the, the beginning of me creating a, an asset that I was ultimately able to sell, which,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 6:04

the key right there. What you said is when we did all this work and put the same things into place like you did. We talked to people that were business brokers and they said, what you have here is worth makes your studio worth about 30% more than it would be if it was just equipment and a lease and maybe a herd of a few people. So.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 6:24

Yeah. So lots of learning and I try to encourage business owners to, it's one of those things where I'm like, listen, once you know you can't go back, so like. You know now, right? So, okay, so let's look from a big. Picture, just big picture. And I know you're in California, so at this point everyone kind of has to be an employee and 99% of

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 6:48

Land of Yes.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 6:50

in Florida, which is like totally the wild, wild west. So it's like you've got two sides of the spectrum, but from. A just like global picture. Can you just give us the difference between an independent contractor and who truly qualifies as an independent contractor and an employee and spec speak specifically? Just, boutique fitness, which is what we're kind of talking about here.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 7:11

Yeah. Yeah. So there's. Two basic tests and they go nationwide, right? Some states have what we call an A b, C test and other states follow the IRS kind of 20 factor test. what. What we need to think about is there are different tax agencies and even workers' comp agencies, so there's lots of tentacles that can kind of come at you. And I'll give you a kind of scary example. I have two studios right now. back to what you were saying about once, you know, even if you don't know, you're supposed to know, That are both being looked at by different entities. One from the, employment development department and another one from a worker's comp. And then once those start to open up, then they start to share information. Maybe not so much now during the shutdown, but they do. and then other, other periscopes kind of come up and start looking at you. So the things to keep in mind is there are three areas, behavioral. Financial and then relationship So behavioral is important to think about because of the aspect of control. So back to what I said about, I wanted to have control over what that teacher was teaching a client in our studio. I wanted to be able to say to her, listen, you need to follow these protocols, or if you're a pt, you need to do. Things a certain way when you've got an ACL rehab patient, that sort of thing. You can't just think for yourself. Financial is what is that relationship as far as is the payer, the studio owner, controlling what comes in and out to the to the worker? Right. The teacher, whoever it is. And that also goes to, to truly have financial independence as a contractor means that I could, if I wanted to send in another teacher to do the work for me, right? I could also risk profit and loss. And if you really think about that as an owner, our teachers aren't risking profit and loss, But even more so is the relationship, and this is the important thing for us. Do you own, let's say, a Pilates studio and are you hiring a independent contractor Pilates teacher? That means that the work they are doing is directly related to the core business that you have. Yeah, that almost without exception makes them an employee, period, end of story, right? For you and I or a social media person or a marketing person, excuse me, we're not part of their core business, and they could stay in business without us or anyone like us, right? So we are truly independent contractors also.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 10:03

Like bookkeepers maybe.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 10:05

bookkeepers, because we could also choose as studio owners not to pay those people if we really want, if we didn't like their work or whatever. The other part of that, relationship is the length of time, right? So how many of us hire an independent contract contractor, teacher and either don't have a contract with them, or don't renew it every year, or just let them work for 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years. That's an employee kind of relationship, right? So here's the tricky part, and I heard this actually when I was in, the European Congress too is younger and younger workers have access to chat GBT. So not only do they know what their rights are, if you say no, you can't have vacation, they jump on things and start looking around. But they'll let chat GBT organize a letter to you. A pretty threatening letter actually, that happened to one of my clients. I'm like, it came within five minutes and I thought, okay, this person is 19. I don't, I'm not taking away from them, but I don't think they could put a letter together like this that quickly. They pulled it from somewhere. So folks are smart and that's a good thing. We wanna respect that. We wanna respect their intelligence, we wanna respect their professionalism, so.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 11:27

Yeah, that's a great, A very well-rounded idea of what constitutes employee versus independent contractor. So let me shoot a few common but what if questions? Okay, so what if have a studio that has nine, nine out of 10 of our Pilates instructors are employees. We have one instructor that teaches on Sunday, two classes a week. She teaches two classes on Sunday. She actually works full time for a physical therapy practice that's in the hospital, not associated with us whatsoever. She may be subs from time to time. What, where is that a gray line? Could that go either way? What are we, where? Where would your advice be on that?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 12:21

It's a,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 12:22

advice might be that's an employee, but is have you come across those situations before?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 12:27

I have, and they went both ways, right? So Yoga Studio here in the Bay Area had a woman who was, I think in her eighties that would come once a year and do a three hour workshop, and this studio got called out and got audited. That particular auditor and that entity said she must be an employee,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 12:51

Wow.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 12:51

though I was okay, that's a stretch. But then I've had it the other way. so a lot of what I hear is I have a Pilates studio, so I'm bringing in a yoga teacher to do this once a year or once a quarter or something like that. We are expecting that tax entity and that auditor to know the difference between Pilates and yoga. I am just gonna let that sit there'cause I think we all know what that answer would be mostly. So it's safest to put them on payroll, even if it's alternate Tuesdays every other month. And to, to toggle them in and out of your payroll companies so you're not paying for them as being a live and on time. That's not the right phrase, but what I mean. Working employee, they can be out in inactive land and not costing you anything, and that's the safest way to do things.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 13:47

Okay.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 13:48

The other is, when they, when the entities see a mixture of the same role, some as employees, some as independent contractors, that's almost the biggest red flag you can get right there.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 14:01

Got it. So talk now about. What you can and cannot enforce. So let's say, listen, let, a lot of our industry still has independent contractors.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 14:13

Absolutely.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 14:14

this is the reality,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 14:15

Yep.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 14:17

If what can technically you enforce for contractors versus employees, and how are you basically setting yourself up for more risk when you ask contractors to do certain things? So this person has, let's say. Yoga Studio Y has, a few independent contractors, right? They want, they understand they have independent contractors, but now they're asking their independent contractors to do certain things that are in addition to already being wrong, putting them more at risk. So if that was a very wrong way of asking you his question, I'm assuming, do you understand what I'm trying to ask?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 14:54

I know where you're going. Yeah,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 14:56

Thank you.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 14:57

so. What we hear right, is they don't come to staff meetings or I ask'em to Swiffer the floor after class and they don't, or, they're, they're not reaching out to clients that have fallen off the schedule. You could possibly, depending on the state, set yourself up with a really good contract from a lawyer, not me, to say, this is a contract. It's a year long, you're teaching X amount of classes. In addition, you're expected to do Swiffer, the floor call clients, things like that. You might might, I doubt it, but might be able to get away with putting that in a contract. But if you step outside of either no contract or just an implied expectation of their just teaching classes, and then you want them to go, oh, let me promote studio y, or How come you're not staying and closing up? Or, how come you're not being able to take money? Tough beings, they can do what they want. They're independent so they don't have to do that, which.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 16:06

should we be asking them to do that.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 16:08

Yeah,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 16:09

that's where they could come back and say, well, they asked me to come to staff meetings. They asked me to do this, which is outside my purview, which means I've been misclassification

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 16:18

misclassify. Yeah,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 16:19

a contractor.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 16:21

absolutely.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 16:22

Yeah,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 16:22

we don't know where it's gonna come from.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 16:24

Right, exactly

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 16:25

That's the thing. And

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 16:27

are always oh, my team would never do that. Well, Stranger things have happened, so.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 16:31

say, my dog never bites people until they do.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 16:34

Until they do. Right. It's what happens. So, okay, so yes. Now, if an independent contractor wants to come to a staff meeting. They can attend a staff meeting, but we, they need to be paid for that time unless it's in the one way that I've seen it with an attorney that we had on the, that was kind of giving a little bit of an example of what you were just giving. if their contract is for this hour. And in the job description, the hour that they're getting paid for includes teaching and swiff. Then you can pro, maybe get away with, because that's it's start to finish,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 17:19

Yeah,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 17:19

right?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 17:20

and it's very clear.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 17:21

it's very clear. But a at a staff meeting is something else. So if a, if the contractor come into a staff meeting, you should be paying this contractor a said amount for attending the staff meeting. Correct or

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 17:32

I ideally, they should be billing you for that,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 17:35

be billing you. Okay.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 17:36

rather than you putting it on a timecard and then sending'em a, that's the cleanest way to do it. It's still not great, but. Running them through, say, mind bodies, timekeeping, and they clock in and out. Really problematic because chances are you've got a front desk person that does the same thing who's an employee

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 17:56

Right.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 17:57

that's, that's kind of sticky. Plus they're showing publicly in your schedule and

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 18:02

Right.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 18:03

yeah,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 18:03

What about, obviously time off is a big thing and people are like, well, they wanna take three months off

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 18:15

They have to do it. They have to let'em go. Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 18:18

Yeah.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 18:19

It's not a request, it's a, Hey, guess what? I'm leaving to Ireland.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 18:22

for three weeks right now. Is there something there in the contract? So let's say they, they are legitimately a contractor or they deem whatever. Is there something in the contract though that says if you, you could write in like, if you are unable to fulfill the contract for X amount of time, this contract is now null and void. So basically you can say, well now you're, you're not keeping up with your end of the contract. So basically it's null and void, which. Means you separate.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 18:55

Yeah, same. Same lies true with employees. Be so clear about every possible expectation you could come up against, whether it's in somebody's contract as an independent contractor or an employee, and that speaks to, we expect that you are going to do these things and. On the good side of the employee part. This is part of the job requirements, and if they're not met, then there's coaching opportunities and all that, but if they're not met on the independent contractor side, that's can be the end of the contract. Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 19:30

so we're coming up to the end of the year now. we're recording this in October. I think you're, you're, it'll air right at the beginning of November, I believe. so. People start talking about performance reviews and end of the year bonuses and stuff like that, and they're like, I wanna give to all my team. Can you speak to that?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 19:50

I would not do a per performance review for an independent contractor at all.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 19:55

Yeah.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 19:55

it's just the safest thing. You can have a conversation with them, but it's definitely not a review. It's not a, you're not, the verbiage I think is so important. You're not hiring them, you're contracting them,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 20:09

them.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 20:10

you're not paying them. They're invoicing you. we're renegotiating the contract and the expectations in that contract. We're not giving a performance review. I, those terms are important and they may not seem like it because they're out in the ether, but they're heard right from whether it's that team member, contractor, or whether it's another employee. So when you start to use the same verbiage for those two different roles, you get into a little trouble. Keeping in mind, the end of the year is coming. As you know, we're working with a couple of places together that we wanna get them onboarded so their employee relationship starts in January. It's a little troublesome at this juncture, unless they're really in a bind. Like I have another one that's being sued right now. So we're trying to do it really, really quick with a lawyer's help. But normally you would wait till January because you don't wanna mix.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 21:10

Mm-hmm.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 21:10

They were 10 99 for a while and now they're employees. And guess what? It's the same business and the same job. And it's like, what?

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 21:18

It's a pain.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 21:18

So, if you have employees, yeah, this is the best time to sit down, plan out the year. We would play kind of a funny little team joke with our group. Mind body, for those of you that have it, is, challenging. So we would cut our schedules, both the class and our teacher schedules at the end of the year so that it was very clean to start the following year. So about this time, I would send out a little note to my staff and say, Hey, what schedule changes do you want for next year? You staying with the same? Are you adding days or you cutting back? Whatever, let me know. Bye. And I gave'em a deadline. Because if we don't hear from you, we're gonna figure that you're quitting December 31st and we'll wish you well. So they would respond back and we would, put the, the schedule together and then we'd sit with them and say, okay, what are we gonna do next year for workshops and who do you wanna bring in? Does, do we wanna have Krista come and do a workshop for, post physical therapy and Pilates, or things like that? what do we wanna put on the schedule? And it was a good team building exercise toward the end of the year.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 24:11

Yeah, so let's transition now towards employees.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 24:14

Yes.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 24:16

now you have an employee, there's a lot of different that you could have. You could have hourly employees, you could have salaried employees, like. could have non-exempt salaried employees. So you explain the difference between exempt and non-exempt salaried employees?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 24:34

Yeah, always a hard one. So exempt. Think of it as they are exempt from overtime and fireworks go off and you're like, Ooh, that's awesome.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 24:46

Mm-hmm.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 24:46

they have to meet certain. Criteria, certain tests. So it has to be a computer scientist, which we're not. in our business, usually it's administrative or supervisory, which means that the bulk of their work, like more than 50% of their work has to be in that capacity. And then you also need to meet a salary threshold. Don't quote me. I think they're changing it again. I don't remember, but it's something like 60,000 something a year. You can look up what is the, not the exempt salary threshold in your state.'cause guess what? California's higher everybody else.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 25:29

Yep.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 25:29

but it changes about lots of different laws change about this time of year. So I know there's one state that's going to look at putting in sick pay. The bill hasn't passed yet. Things are gonna get really slowed down because of the shutdown. So they're probably gonna be massive changes here in the next, like at the end of November, I would guess. when everybody's got their glasses back on and they're doing their work, there's also making sure that they. Even when you bring in somebody that's exempt, that you put the expectation that there's a certain number of hours that they're going to work. And I would recommend having them in the studio, even if it's back office admin stuff. we still can't really monitor without expensive software, what people are doing at home. and your workers' comp coverage. I think it's gonna be a little bit less if they're in the studio versus. At home, but non-exempt means they are not exempt from overtime and that they're paid hourly. And that hourly, remember in our business varies. I'm not kidding you. We had nine different pay rates between admin, teacher trainee s. Privates, duets, fours, threes, twos, all of that stuff. Reformer classes, mat classes, da, da, da. So, that hourly rate gets, they get paid for whatever it is that they're doing at that hour, whether it's teaching or admin or meeting time, things like that. So that's the good news, is that rate can go up and down. Rarely in our, in my experience in our industry, do we run across. Over time, so I wouldn't even concern myself with it. I don't know if my, my partner did work like a maniac. She saw like nine people a day. she's crazy,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 27:21

we don't run into that mostly with, client facing like

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 27:25

right?

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 27:27

sometimes with administrators, front desk personnel, if we're short a person,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 27:30

Sure.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 27:31

qualify for overtime. usually in our industry, what I've seen, and I'm talking about more of the businesses that, under a million dollars. maybe two locations. I'm not talking about big franchises, but you might maybe have one exempt salaried person who's your director of operations, who's managing other people who has people report to them. But, when, when your business gets bigger, maybe some of these franchises or you have, 4, 5, 6, 10 locations. Like,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 28:00

Right,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 28:01

not, that's not most of my listeners. So,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 28:03

right.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 28:04

okay, so now when you're talking about, let's talk about what you can ask of a employee.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 28:12

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 28:12

Okay. So we get this question a lot. I have, and, and it's not as much in the Pilates bar world, but it is in the physical therapy world.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 28:22

Mm-hmm.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 28:23

most physical therapists are paying off a sh ton of debt. And so most of us need salaries. Okay? So most people coming outta school, they don't wanna work hourly. They're like, I need a salary. All right? It's also

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 28:36

You can do a non, you can do a non-exempt salary as well, and.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 28:39

You can do a non-exempt salary, which is what most of them do. Non-exempt salary. They base it off an hourly, but it really is a salaried position, right? That's more how our industry works. So now what we get from business owners is, so Sally, who's on salary, I've noticed she's just leaving early because maybe her afternoon is people canceled. What, let's talk first about really what we can, expect and dictate to the, I hate to use the word dictate. It sounds.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 29:09

I understand what you said though. Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 29:11

what can they do legally? Right? And then we'll get into a little bit of like the mindset, like is this a one-off thing or that it's okay to let go because it, the be the long-term benefit is better. But from a legal perspective, someone's a sal employed, they're salaried for 40 hours a week and you start to notice that they're either coming in late because they don't have a client. what, and again, I. I do teach like this is about expectations and setting them clearly. So, but from a legal perspective, what can the employer say and dictate to those employees?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 29:44

You can say and dictate anything you want. I have this. It's kind of not, it's not ongoing anymore, but there's a studio I work with and all of their teachers are salaried. And I was like, are you sure you wanna do that? Because it was herding cats for a while until we got very clear job descriptions. But importantly, a downtime playbook, right? And. You should be doing that for your front desk people anyway, because as we all know, front desk is super intense and then you're like, what am I doing now? So have a playbook of some sort that is there for them to use and it's productive. It's not just busy work when they're client free or when they think, okay, maybe I can go home. So that they're reporting in to some sort of strategy where you know they're going through that playbook and they know what needs to be done. Like Sally did one through 10 yesterday and it's all good. Maybe I need to pick up and do 11 through 14 and get that taken care of, right, so that we're not just starting at the beginning of the playbook every single time, but. If that's not then being done, you are well within your rights as an employer to say, listen, first off, let's have a conversation. I'm big on period question mark ratio, right? So how can I help? I noticed, Sally, that you are leaving at at three rather than five. Is everything okay at home? They could be leaving because their kid's sick or whatever. We don't know. Right? So be curious first. Right? And if it's a, oh, I just didn't have anything to do, okay, let's have a conversation about that. We initiated that playbook six months ago. What questions do you have about that? Or how can I help you remember to implement that when you have some downtime? So I'm, I'm asking right? I'm not. Demanding and requiring, although I am. Yeah,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 31:50

Mm-hmm.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 31:52

you won't get buy-in by being a, BITC. I tried when I was younger, my very first management job and I had a, a dishwasher to call me out and say, listen, manning, I wasn't married then. You're a bitch. I'm like, woo. I am.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 32:07

get you anywhere.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 32:08

Yeah. So. And it's on you as a, as a leader if you don't have that in place already. And I'm a big believer in being vulnerable and saying, Hey Sally, I didn't even think about this consequence. Why don't you and I sit together and think about what are the things that we can do? As team members when we have downtime, because I know there's a ton, is it calling clients that have dropped off? Is it cleaning the reformers? We actually, we had a chart in the back room and we would rotate through. Lisa's got reformers this quarter and Leigh's got chairs and Katie's got coralline. All that kind of stuff. So rotate through that cleaning jazz. And don't make it so that everybody stays on reformers, always, but partner with your people

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 32:58

Mm-hmm.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 32:58

out what those things are. Is it walking up and down the boulevard to reach out to, to pt? locations maybe? Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 33:07

some. It also made me think too, you're, you were a business owner. I was a business owner. We get up in our head a lot. So if I were to walk into the studio and watch someone walking out and be where are they going? For some reason, the first thing my head goes to is the fuck? Like. Why are they taking advantage of a situation?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 33:28

Yeah,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 33:28

that's the first place.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 33:30

sure.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 33:30

for some business owners, then they're well, they don't care and they don't do this. And maybe just you said, just say, Hey, I noticed this happened a couple times. is everything okay? Right. Is everything okay? Do you need anything? Is there something I support? And they're oh no, I just didn't have a client. Then maybe that expectation needs to be set of, may have not articulated this well at the beginning. However, if you need to leave early or you're not feeling well, would you mind just messaging, or better yet, not you, your manager or the person that they have in place of Hey, I rec, I'm just gonna leave early today, or is it okay if I leave early today, I'm not feeling great and my

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 34:12

Right,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 34:12

clients canceled.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 34:13

right.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 34:14

I think owners just want. I don't know. I think they just wanna feel someone's not taking advantage of them,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 34:21

Yeah, sure. Right.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 34:23

So

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 34:23

we also, we're in a compassion based business and as such, we are so reluctant to confront.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 34:32

Yes.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 34:33

And if we can take that out of a confrontation mindset and a curiosity, put it in a curiosity mindset. But also I, I told a client this one time and I'm like, why did it take me so long to think of that? That's, and she said, that's brilliant. Think about it from the business perspective. The business is telling you the owner what to do,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 34:55

Mm-hmm.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 34:56

right? We may own it, but the business is dictating that we have coverage in those two hours that you're leaving. And it's important that,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 35:06

someone walks in,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 35:08

yeah. I know you wanna leave. I'm not going to, to me, I'm not gonna say, would you mind, I'm going to ask you to reach out to someone and let somebody know so that there's coverage. It's important that Pilates in the Grove are absolute center is covered during those hours. I'm not telling you this absolute is, or Pilates in the growth, right? So if you, all those kind of conversations that are. Performance based. For instance, I had a client that said, oh, we're requiring teachers to provide their lesson plans by Sunday night. Okay, are they off on the weekends? Why aren't you asking'em to do it on Friday afternoon before they leave? Right. Don't, don't be barging into their weekends.'cause we need to respect it. They don't own the business. We do. So change that, but then say, remember this is a job requirement and in order for you to keep performing, this needs to be done. It's not a, would you mind getting this done? Right. This is a requirement and the business needs it for continuity for, Client trust and, and for team, team building, we all need to do this together. So if one isn't doing that, it's not fair to the rest of the team.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 36:23

fair to everyone else. Yes. It, it was also a way, we've had a couple businesses that have had. Kind of issues with this, where they're on salary and their productivity is not great. Their utilization's not great. They are leaving early, or they're like on their phone during downtime. And sometimes I've said, maybe this is an opportunity to offer this person. there's a lot of intangibles in here, but maybe it's Hey, if you feel like you don't wanna work during the downtime, we can move you to an hourly

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 36:59

Absolutely.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 37:00

and you can get, so let's say I'm making up numbers, but let's say they're on a$50,000 a year salary, so technically they get paid$25 an hour, right?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 37:09

Mm-hmm.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 37:09

But we're like, if you prefer to have your own time, be your own time, I can respect that. What we can do is we can pay you$30 an hour, but we're gonna take it, we're gonna be hourly, right? So you're gonna get paid per revenue generating hour. Now there's different nuances that have to happen, but sometimes that could be a a time where you have that conversation with someone and you never

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 37:33

Yep.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 37:33

other person might be like. That works great for me. So

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 37:36

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 37:37

have a client at eight in the morning, I can stay home

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 37:41

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 37:41

and come in later.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 37:42

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 37:43

also, you should have expectations and what that means and all of this kind of stuff, sometimes that's a way to say, we can give you a guaranteed 50,000, or I can pay you a little more per patient and then you can just, you're not on the schedule, you

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 37:59

Float away. Yeah. Go across the street and have coffee. Yeah, absolutely.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 38:02

Or, take a class or do different things that you want.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 38:06

And it's the same with a, an exempt salaried person. If you need to move them off into hourly, you need to move'em off into hourly, That's okay. Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 38:14

talk about pay time off.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 38:17

Yes.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 38:17

still talk about employees. So we've already said contractors technically don't get time off. They can take off whatever time they want. Your time off policy and, and correct me if I'm wrong from, and we're talking businesses less than 20 employees, and I don't know if it differs from state to state, but pay time versus how much you need to give versus sick time. Can you explain, we're required to do from a legal perspective, if anything.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 38:51

So some states have a requirement for paid sick time and it varies. I, I would have this entire wall covered with charts if it was, it varies between number of employees. Sometimes it's more than one.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 39:06

Okay.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 39:07

and I, we even. We even fought that and said more than one. Meaning if you have one then you don't. I is that what you meant? Oh, no, that's not what we meant.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 39:16

anybody is

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 39:17

yeah, five 15, that sort of thing. So, and again, time of year right now, I know in particular there's one state that's looking at, adding it and it affects one of our clients. So that's interesting. I'm okay. So a lot of those states have it. The tricky part with that is yes, you need to, you need to give it to them. Oftentimes you have a choice between accrual versus front loading. I always recommend, if you've got people that are working more than 10 hours a week. I like to front load their sick pay because I don't want to carry it over.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 39:57

Yeah.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 39:58

that doesn't hold true in every state and every jurisdictions. For instance, Berkeley. Here, you have to carry over no matter what.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 40:05

In Florida you do not, and you

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 40:06

Yeah, in Florida, wild, what?

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 40:10

Yeah.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 40:10

don't know how you guys ended up on the east coast. You really should be over here. but for sick pay in general, you don't have to pay any unused sick pay out if someone leaves or is fired, paid time off or vacation or whatever you wanna call it sometimes, but not always. You have to pay anything that's unused out when they leave. Again, state to state, jurisdiction to jurisdiction. I personally never offered PTOI. the beauty of our business, I feel, is we can take off pretty much whenever we want, as long as you did the request for us. Right? And we were request based, we were up to, I think 18 or 19 people and we. Our policy said no more than two people at a time can be gone. Unless, of course grandma's in the hospital or you've got an injury or something like that. But it was on a request first come, first serve basis. And we had teachers that took no time off. We had teachers that said, Hey, I'm saving up. I'm going literally to Ireland for a month. Awesome. They were responsible for covering all their, their clients and their classes. And the minute those were covered, those teachers then inherited that and were responsible to get it covered if they needed. and it worked out great. We had no problems at all. Sick pay does scare the heck out of people because you think to yourself, oh my gosh, I pay my. Teachers$60 a private session, is that what they get for their sick pay of 40 hours? Keep in mind two things. It's regular rate of pay, so remember the nine different pay rates I talked about. It's gonna be the average of that, what they've done in the last 90 days. So it's usually less than the$60 and. How many people that are on schedule for 40 hours that are gonna miss that whole week that you have to pay the whole 40 hours for? It's really just the hours that they are scheduled for on the day that they're sick. Right. So it could be three hours, could be five, rarely. Is it more than that? Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 42:25

Right.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 42:26

We talked, you and I talked about having vacation for certain roles and not other roles. And again, it's state to state. You kind of have to look at the requirements for each state. Like, could I give my manager five days paid time off and nobody else in the studio? More than likely, yes. But gotta check and see. that's where you're

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 42:45

had a very similar policy to you. I actually eventually did start giving my full-time employees paid time off, full-time for us was 28 hours or more of scheduled. Revenue generating time. So it wasn't that they were just. On the schedule 28 hours, but

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 43:05

Yes.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 43:05

five people scheduled. Right? So it usually was people that were teaching 26, 27, 30 hours a week teaching.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 43:13

Mm-hmm.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 43:14

we started, we started with accrual that got a little crazy and confusing, and so we ended up just doing front loading just because it was easier math, not because, but we, we also had a policy, they couldn't take any paid time off for the first 90 days. So. It kind of allowed them to kind of accrue a little bit. We had the same policy. They couldn't, no more than two people could be off at any given time. they had to give their request 21 days in advance unless it was a, a last minute emergency.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 43:46

Mm-hmm.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 43:47

also had to provide who was covering for that.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 43:50

Yes.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 43:50

once they got all of that, then. They submitted it and 90% of the time their classes were always covered. It was 90% of the time, sometimes a private here or there, and I'd be we'll work it out.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 44:07

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 44:07

point. Some privates are no, I'll just wait till you come back. No problem. But we all, so that's the employee's responsibility, that's part of the process. And guess what, if two people are already off, just recognize. It may be a no.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 44:24

Yeah,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 44:24

as a, as an that is okay to do correct

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 44:30

yeah, yeah, for sure.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 44:32

Yeah.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 44:32

it's also helpful to coach up your teachers. One of when I ran this big club, we had the rockstar teacher and whenever she went away, I could hear her in her classes going, I'm gonna be gone next week. And you've got Maureen, you should come and support her. But I'll be back. So guess what? Maureen's class, hardly anyone in there.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 44:57

Yeah.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 44:58

we learned right away, we need to coach our staff that this is, this is about the client this is about their health and wellbeing and movement health, right? So it's all of our jobs to be able to support those clients. So when McKayla goes away for three months or three weeks to to Ireland. She knows to talk to her people in a fashion that says, Hey, I'm gonna pass you off to Nicole. And she's awesome. She's got all the notes and she's got Katie and Claudia and Louise back there to help her out if she's got any issues, which I don't think she's gonna have. But you're in really good hands and rarely did clients go, no, I don't want to.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 45:39

Yeah. I mean, we had it a little bit. We had a, we had to do that a little bit too, and we actually did, I did like a whole math problem, like situation for them, and I showed them like, if all of you take two weeks off, which is nothing, right?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 45:53

right?

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 45:53

all of you take two weeks off and we lose X amount of revenue, there's 18 of you,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 45:58

Mm-hmm.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 45:59

lose over a hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 46:02

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 46:03

two of our administrators.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 46:04

Mm-hmm.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 46:05

So I don't want you not to take time off. No. It's why I give you pay time off. I want you to take all the time off you want, but I also want you to have a job to come back to.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 46:14

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 46:15

it's important that we do this in a way that is the clients and we go back to our core values. Like customer commitment was one of our big core values. And so, it happens now. It's coming the end of the year. We had a policy for holiday time off.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 46:31

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 46:31

We were like, you can choose Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year's. If you choose to be off for Thanksgiving, my expectation is that you will be working Christmas and New Year. Now we're not open those all those three days, but I'm talking about around the

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 46:45

Around it. Yeah,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 46:46

we cannot be closed. And when I was a newbie business owner, I just taught all those class. I was like, oh, you want time off? Okay, problem. And I ended up teaching

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 46:56

sure.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 46:56

this is not sustainable,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 46:58

No.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 46:58

have more than one location.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 47:00

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 47:01

it's okay as an employee, you just have to have them written out and you have to have. Does that, is that something that goes in your handbook or is that more like a policy and procedure?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 47:11

It's more policy and procedure. So the handbook I had, I hired a friend of mine who was an HR professional for a while. She came in the studio. She beat it into me. A handbook is all the legalese, their leave rights, when they get paid harassment, all that sort of stuff. And the manual, the Studio Manual, or operations manual has all those other policies in there. Like, yeah, in the handbook it says when you're actually closed, but the details of we're closed, but if you wanna train, you can come in, if you've got a key and

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 47:45

it.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 47:45

all that kind of stuff goes in.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 47:47

policy too.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 47:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 47:49

yeah, we were, I, listen, I always said we're gonna cancel classes, but

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 47:53

yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 47:53

of you, we had a lot of people that. Didn't celebrate Christmas for religious

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 47:59

Sure, sure.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 48:00

And I was

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 48:00

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 48:01

you wanna come in and teach, I'm okay with that. I don't, you don't have to. I wanna make it very clear that we're not asking you to work on a holiday, but if you wanna see your clients or if we closed early on Labor Day, and I'm if you wanna come in. That is absolutely your prerogative. We actually did, for the last couple years, I own the business. Thanksgiving classes were always a huge hit for us. So I actually said to to the teachers, I was if you want to teach on Thanksgiving Day, I will give you a 50 50 revenue share. So if you choose to teach a class on Thanksgiving Day, which we always. Sold out,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 48:38

Mm-hmm.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 48:39

of the revenue for that day. so a lot of our instructors were well, I,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 48:44

Fighting.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 48:44

in and teach. So, okay,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 48:46

Yeah. And we have to think also, I'll just pause on that. If, if accommodations,'cause you'd mentioned the religion part, right? There are other religions that have other days that they want off or they're fasting or whatever it is. That, and we ha as if they're employees, we have to respect that that's part of their rights as employees.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 49:05

Yes. And in terms of unpaid time off, which is what you said, a lot of people have unpaid time off, but let's say you, you do have PTO, they've exhausted that,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 49:14

Mm-hmm.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 49:16

Us, we as employers can say, you've exhausted your paid time off. We could say no to the future requests technically. Or is there an unpaid, what is the unpaid time off? is it varied for state? how does that work?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 49:36

Yeah, no, they can, they can take whatever unpaid time off they want, as long asit suits business needs. We can't deny them if they call in sick and we can't deny them. Let's say they're coming off some sort of injury or, or pregnancy even, right? That's a big one in our, we have to be able to say, listen, I get it. You're gonna have extra time off. They can file generally, I don't even know with Florida now, but most states will pay them something when they're off for pregnancy leave. And we have to do our best to hold that job now in our work. Right. That doesn't always mean you're gonna come back in and get all 30 of your clients back in your schedule. They may have moved off to someone else and liked them better, and that's just the nature of the business as far as I know, that's never been adjudicated anywhere. what can we do if we don't have a client that we can put on their schedule? Right.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 50:31

Right.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 50:32

So I did dance in the gray part because I didn't want. If my people wanted to take time off, I didn't wanna say, sorry, you can't work more than eight hours. Don't tell anyone I did this more than eight hours on a Friday so that you can take a Monday off. load up your schedule. I'm gonna look the other way. you're, you're a big girl. Is it legal? Hell no. But

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 50:58

Is it,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 50:59

what?

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 50:59

not? So what about people that work four tens or three twelves?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 51:03

Yeah. And you have to, and I think the requirement in California now is you have to inform the state that you're doing that and you have to get permission from'em. I don't know if that got rescinded or not. Ooh, too complicated. I look at it. I'm not grocery.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 51:19

with

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 51:19

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 51:20

or physicians

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 51:21

for sure.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 51:22

sometimes.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 51:23

And they're also governed by collective bargaining agreements, so they can kind of do that too. But no, it's, it's regular, more than eight hours in California and you gotta pay'em overtime. Well, what the heck does that look like with

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 51:35

weekly, it's daily.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 51:38

state is different.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 51:39

Oh, okay. Okay.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 51:41

Yeah. So.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 51:43

if you had to give one piece of advice to a, studio owner listening today to prevent these headaches in the future, what is one thing. could do, what advice would you give them?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 52:01

Be brave and set the expectations ahead of time. Just take the time to sit down, no matter what you have as far as types or classifications. But take the time to really sit down and think about, on a Sunday put to 25 things that you expect out of someone in a teacher role or a front desk role. You don't have to flesh'em out. Just put'em down and then. Even take them to someone that's in the role now that you trust or that you respect and say, okay, I've got these 25 things. How do we flesh this out to make it so that everyone is on the same page and understands what they're supposed to do? But also, that's my one biggest thing. And don't be afraid. This is your business. You have worked so hard to get here and you mentioned something before we came on air. I wanna be the cool boss. Don't be the cool boss.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 52:59

it's hard.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 53:00

it's really hard it, because I said, we're compassion based people and we don't wanna tell people the yucky things, but if we. Approach it in a leadership mindset where we can set the expectations all the way from. Hiring on through, when I'm interviewing people, here's what we expect at absolute, we don't require these things, but it's great to have and it makes you so much more of a professional. we set those expectations before we even brought'em on board. All the way down to, you and I talked earlier about scheduling. What if their schedules aren't full? We set that expectation too. It's gonna take you a month or two to ramp your schedule up. Maybe you'll be amazing and we'll get it done quicker. But more than likely, it's a, we just went to a super busy restaurant opening and a server that I know really well who's very capable was there, and they said, yeah, we only have two tables. Yeah, well they want you to ramp up and know the product inside and out before they slam me with five.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 54:03

that. yeah,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 54:04

that.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 54:05

yeah.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 54:05

So, and same with our people. We want them to understand our culture and what we're about before we start. Slamming'em full of clients that they may not be training in the fashion that we want them to be training in.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 54:19

Right.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 54:20

I could go, I could go

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 54:22

add, you can be a cool boss and hold people accountable and set expectations. Two things can be true

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 54:30

good at the same time. Yep.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 54:31

So, well this was great. I, I always love talking to you and

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 54:35

Thank you.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 54:36

something about the eight hour day.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 54:39

Not always. Not always.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 54:41

not always, which is kind of weird. Kind of strange just because every state is different. But I didn't, I never, I always, I always thought no matter where it was, it was just it was for a week. So, if somebody was Hey, I need to go to the dentist, but I don't wanna use my pay time off, I'm well, if you wanna come in two hours early tomorrow. That's cool, but I never, I don't even know. I mean, Florida, you can do pretty much anything,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 55:05

Yeah. Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 55:05

I don't even know if it's actually, I have to, I should look that up.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 55:09

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 55:09

I should look it up in Florida,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 55:11

Yeah. And every administration, as these administrations come in,

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 55:15

in and out.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 55:16

it's Lordy, now what? Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 55:19

can people find you?'cause I'm sure people may wanna reach out to you for your services or learn more information about you. So where can people go to check you out?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 55:27

So I'm on Instagram fitness, hr. fortunately got rid of the underscore because I got my trademarking.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 55:34

Yes.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 55:35

fitness hr.com. I've got a link there if you want to book in for a 25 minute conversation. I, I am just here to help our industry grow and be more professional. And I really don't want to see owners who have worked so hard and lots of them who have survived this five year drama that we've been through, let their business go down the tubes because of something that they could have prevented. So I'm here as a resource. To bounce ideas off of and ask questions of no dumb questions ever

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 56:09

Yeah.

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 56:10

because movement, patients and clients, you don't know HR stuff, and that's fine.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 56:15

Yeah. And you, you, you, you are responsible to know it, but you don't have to. why you hire people, right? So you don't have to be the expert in every single thing in your job. And I always tell business owners this, you're gonna pay with time or money. And most of us, usually when we're in this predicament, sometimes we're I don't have any time to deal with it. So work with someone like Katie and pay the money to have it done right the first time and have all your questions answered, right? And then that way you're set up for success. In the future, the same way that we being the professionals that we are, whether we're physical therapists or Pilates instructors, we can increase the speed someone has to success when they work with an expert. Working with an expert like Haiti is gonna increase your speed to success for things like standard operating procedures, employ handbooks, manuals, contracts, which is stuff that just. Just the thought of some of that stuff makes me sweat a little bit.'cause it's like I don't, we know we need to do it, but we're

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 57:21

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 57:21

are we gonna have the time?

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 57:23

Yeah.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 57:23

I appreciate we're gonna link all of your contacts in the show notes. I appreciate you so much, Katie,

Katie Santos-FitnessHR 57:30

Thank you.

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 57:30

your time and your knowledge with us and until next time everyone, bye for now.