^ ^ ^ Rock Jungle Climbing · Factory

Youth Programs Review

A plan to run our youth programs at high margin, with lean overhead.

The Headline
The Headline

Our youth programs can run at very high margin, provided we keep admin overhead lean. The product works, demand is healthy, and direct delivery is cheap. What hurt us was overhead, not the program: two full-time non-coaching admins were carrying roughly $90k (about 19% of youth revenue) before a single coach or program lead was paid. Across youth ($392k) plus school bookings ($71k), this is a ~$463k operation. With the changes below, total labour lands near 34%, against a healthy industry band of 45–55%. That headroom is the opportunity.

$463k
Total operation — youth ($392k) + school ($71k)
~$90k
Carried by two non-coaching admins (~19% of youth revenue)
~34%
Total labour after the changes below
45–55%
Healthy industry labour band — our headroom
The Foundation

What’s Already Working

1
Structurally high margin
Direct coaching is only about 16% of staged-lesson revenue. Delivery has never been the problem.
2
Recurring revenue engine
Staged lessons (Stages 1–5) are ~$316k, about 68% of all youth and school revenue, billed across six terms a year with auto-renewal.
3
The product is sound
Clear stage progression, established pricing, defined terms, and classes filling to capacity. This is an operations fix, not a product fix.
4
We already own the right booking tool
RGP’s native time-slot booking can show availability, take bookings, and auto-notify staff. No new software needed.
5
The delivery bench already exists
Our coaches and school-booking crew are the same cross-trained pool. Daytime coverage is flexing people we already have, not a new hire.
6
Dead-hour revenue + a funnel
School bookings run midday when the floor is otherwise empty, and throw off ~860 free drop-in coupons a year: an acquisition channel.
The Plan

The Three Changes

The Throughline

All three changes make youth labour cheaper and more flexible. The single failure mode in every case is the same: ownership of the unglamorous coordination quietly evaporating. Each change works as long as one named person holds the boring part. Get that right and the program runs at the margin its economics already support.

Factory
Boulders
Niche
Prepared for Rock Jungle ownership and management.
^ ^ ^ Recommendation 01

Coordinator Becomes a 30-Hour Seasonal Coach-Lead

Move away from a salaried admin coordinator. Hire or promote a strong coach into a fixed-term, higher-hourly role that is coaching-first with a protected block of paid coordination time.

^ How the role breaks down
30 hours/week at ~$28–30/hrAbout $840–900/week, roughly $33–35k over a Sept–June season. At or below the old $41–45k salaried version, with no year-round commitment.
Coaching: ~12–16 hrs/weekOn the Stage 4/5 or elite group. Bundles the senior-coach need into one rate and protects upper-stage retention and the comp-team pipeline.
Coordination: ~14–18 hrs/week in a protected, coaching-free blockA set weekday block for scheduling, rosters, parent comms, and comp-team planning. Not squeezed between classes. Admin wedged into pre-class downtime is the first thing dropped on a busy night, which is how we slid toward needing dedicated admins last time.
OwnsTerm scheduling, coach assignments, rosters, parent communication, and the Panthers comp team.
FitA strong coach with weekday availability (e.g. a university kinesiology student).

Structure it as a fixed-term seasonal contract

A defined start and end matched to the program season gives a clean renewal point each year, flexes cost off in summer, and fits a student’s school-year availability. The June end is a clean mutual off-ramp: if they’re great and want summer, roll them onto a camp contract; if not, it simply lapses.

^ Two flags to settle
Flag 1 · Comp team

Comp team runs year-round (Sept/Jan tryouts, summer training). If the contract ends in June, comp team is orphaned each summer. Extend to cover the comp season or assign comp ownership separately over summer.

Flag 2 · Classification

Use a fixed-term employment contract, not an independent-contractor agreement. A 30-hour role coaching our classes on our schedule with our gear looks like employment under CRA tests. Confirm with our accountant first.

^ ^ ^ Recommendation 02

Separate Bookings & Turn On the RGP Booking System

Bookings come out of the program coordinator’s world entirely and get a real self-serve front end.

^ What changes
Investigate why RGP’s native booking isn’t in useOur page is already RGP-powered but routes everything to a manual email quote. The native time-slot widget can show availability and capture bookings directly. Confirm our plan tier and whether there’s any real barrier.
If no barrier, implement online booking with auto-confirmationTeachers pick an available slot on the website instead of negotiating by email.
Split by who is payingCard-paying groups (parties, clubs, casual) book and pay end to end. School boards see availability and request the slot, but we invoice offline (they run on POs and net-30, not cards). Easy scheduling for schools, not necessarily easy payment.
Replace the custom-quote pagePublish a per-session price, the 3+ session discount, a module menu, and a slot picker, so “we have budget for X” and “can you come earlier” are answered before they email.
Invoicing and AR stay with the booking ownerSchool-booking invoicing and AR sit with the booking owner (see Recommendation 3), not split off to finance.
^ ^ ^ Recommendation 03

Daytime Booking & Scheduling Ownership

The booking thread is owned during the day by the facility manager or daytime floor supervisor, whoever is best placed.

^ How it works
A named owner, with a pay bump to matchThat position takes on the extra work and gets a pay bump. The raise makes bookings someone’s named job rather than everyone’s background task. Diffuse ownership is what created the original mess.
Delivery stays the shared poolThe same coaches cover evening classes and daytime bookings. Only the ownership is separate, not the people.
Invoicing and AR ride with the booking ownerNot finance, so it stays one job end to end. Batch it into a weekly aging-report block rather than chasing payments ad hoc.
Automated notify at zero costWhen a booking lands, it posts to a shared channel or calendar so the bench can claim coverage. A free shared Google Calendar or a free Slack webhook does this without paying for Slack Premium.

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