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Originally posted on Franchising.com
New father Griffin Gordon was impressed when he and his wife took their oldest child to The Little Gym for the first time. They'd visited other children's enrichment concepts, but The Little Gym's culture was remarkable. Gordon saw how it could have a meaningful effect on children.
"The Little Gym stood alone in terms of the positive instruction, curriculum, and immediate effect it had on my daughter," Gordon says. "Beyond the clear benefits of gymnastics-based training and activity, The Little Gym teaches kids how to develop self-confidence and socialization skills that will serve them for the rest of their lives."
Last year, the investment firm Gordon founded and operates, Taurus Capital Partners, partnered with Hidden River Strategic Capital to purchase seven The Little Gym locations and form Somersault Holdings. The Little Gym programs work with children from 4 months to 12 years old with movement-based learning and imaginative play.
Based in Chicago, Gordon and his firm own and operate The Little Gym franchise locations in multiple regions across the country, and they prioritize hiring talented and passionate staff members and maintaining a strong culture. He says Somersault's management and employees are the business' greatest assets and works to ensure the company has the right people in place to provide a great experience and value for customers.
"We have incredible employees, and it has been deeply rewarding to see so many of them offered new, exciting opportunities to grow as we have scaled our business," Gordon says. "There is so much creativity and positivity at all levels, from people who have been with us for 30 years to high schoolers who just joined. Our team really loves both the program and camaraderie, and that is reflected in how they interact with the children and the parents who come to our locations each day."
Somersault has quickly become The Little Gym's largest multi-unit operator with 22 open locations and another eight under development. If Gordon ever needs a reminder of the value The Little Gym provides, he only has to go to one of the nearby locations where his children are enrolled.
Personal
First job: I worked as a summer camp counselor in suburban Chicago when I was 16 years old.
Formative influences/events: Understanding early in my career that an employee's professional and personal lives were two sides of the same coin. By putting people in positions to be successful at work, you can have an incredible effect on their personal lives.
Key accomplishments: My family and friends and building a career where I love what I do. Those things give me the deepest sense of purpose and fulfillment.
Biggest current challenge: Balance! I am fortunate to have a career that I am passionate about. I love our team and could easily spend 100 hours a week devoted just to Somersault. However, it is very important to me to build a multidimensional life, and that requires having the right priorities.
Next big goal: Expanding Somersault's footprint to 100 Little Gym locations over the next decade.
First turning point in your career: Betting on myself to build something on my own by founding Taurus Capital Partners. Prior to Taurus, I spent my career as an investor and operator. In both roles, I was helping great founder-led businesses scale and professionalize. We are doing the same thing at Taurus: investing and taking an active role in creating value by partnering with exceptional founder-led franchisee businesses, like Somersault.
Best business decision: Deciding to invest in The Little Gym system and partner with Richard Moore.
Hardest lesson learned: Andrew Carnegie said, "As I grow older, I pay less attention to what people say. I just watch what they do." I constantly strive to partner with people who, above all else, live their values.
Work week: I usually work each day from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and then try to focus on my kids until bedtime. After that, I might enjoy bad TV with my wife or open the laptop and keep working. I try my best to block out the weekends for family and friends.
Exercise/workout: Peloton Tread.
Best advice you ever got: "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."--Ralph Waldo Emerson.
What's your passion in business? Working with smart, driven, high-character people and doing my best to help them succeed.
How do you balance life and work? It is never perfect, but I try to be really structured and purposeful about my time. I also have an incredible wife, which should really be the first and only answer.
Guilty pleasure: Annual trips with friends.
Favorite book: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
Favorite movie: "Once Upon a Time in the West."
What do most people not know about you? I do not like talking about myself and would strongly prefer that you featured some of our exceptional leaders at Somersault.
Pet peeve: Slow drivers in the passing lane.
What did you want to be when you grew up? Shooting guard in the NBA.
Last vacation: Family trip to South Haven, Michigan, earlier this summer.
Person you'd most like to have lunch with: It is a long list, but the first two that come to mind are Jerry West or Joan Didion.
Management
Business philosophy: "You don't have a lot of envy. You don't have a lot of resentment. You don't overspend your income. You stay cheerful in spite of your troubles. You deal with reliable people. And you do what you're supposed to do. And all these simple rules work so well to make your life better. And they're so trite."--Charlie Munger.
Management method or style: Servant leadership. Whether as an investor or operator, my responsibility is to put people in positions to be successful and get out of their way.
Greatest challenge: Our greatest challenge is our greatest asset, which is our people. We have an exceptionally strong team and culture, and that is something that we need to fight for every single day. The challenge comes in maintaining those standards. An exceptional workplace culture is a finicky thing. You can spend years building it but lose it quickly.
How do others describe you? You would have to ask them, but I hope they would say something about how I am always trying to help them to be successful and bring a low ego and a lot of self-deprecation to the table.
Have you ever been in a mentor-mentee relationship? What did you learn? I have not been in a true mentee relationship, but I love to solicit guidance and wisdom from people from many different walks of life.
One thing you're looking to do better: Listen more and talk less. For me, it is the key to learning and improving.
How you give your team room to innovate and experiment: As managers, our goal is to create clear roles, responsibilities, and goals for our team and give them a tremendous amount of latitude to accomplish those objectives. As a company, we are always trying to provide a fertile learning culture for our team. A key part is fostering a collaborative, open dialogue among our employees to share their individual experiences and knowledge.
How close are you to operations? As part of an operationally focused investment firm, we engage deeply in key strategic initiatives and functions that small, founder-owned businesses lack the resources to effectively manage. In general, I keep a close pulse on the operating rhythm of the business and endeavor to ask questions and apply pressure in a thoughtful way, but I absolutely do not and should not be telling people how to do their daily jobs.
What are the two most important things you rely on from your franchisor? Unleashed Brands, the youth enrichment platform that owns The Little Gym, continues to be a great partner to us, and we strive to reciprocate and help them accomplish their operating and growth goals within The Little Gym brand. Two areas where I think they have excelled are development, where they have reinvigorated system growth in a system that was previously at a standstill, and data, where they are putting in place the analytical infrastructure that will allow us to better understand and manage our business.
What you need from vendors: I am looking for alignment--vendors who have our best interests at heart. Have you changed your marketing strategy in response to the economy? How? One of the key indicators of The Little Gym's exceptional value proposition is the outstanding Net Promoter Scores we receive from our customers. In any economy, our job is to invest in our product and our local community to foster a deep connection with local parents and children. We believe we are changing the world "one cartwheel at a time," as our CEO likes to say, and that relentless focus on our impact is our true north.
How is social media affecting your business? Social media is an important part of our relationship with new and existing customers, and we want to ensure that all channels reflect the exceptional service we provide.
How do you hire and fire? Cautiously. Our business is our people. We constantly strive to get the right people in the right seats, which involves vigilance and thoughtfulness in our processes and evaluations.
How do you train and retain? We have a robust training program both for new employees and ongoing development. We have invested heavily in these programs as part of building a best-in-class workplace.
How do you deal with problem employees? Quickly. We strive to be clear about expectations for our team. When they do not meet expectations, we have those conversations as promptly and transparently as possible.
Fastest way into your doghouse: A lack of passion for our program and customers. If an employee does not feel like they are positively and permanently impacting our customers every day, they should be doing something else.
Bottom Line
2024/2025 goals: Given our rapid growth and plans to continue to scale our footprint, we have a particular focus on strengthening our operational processes across the country. Specifically, that involves creating and implementing playbooks around recruiting, hiring, and training as well as empowering our managers to lead with confidence and autonomy.
Growth meter: How do you measure your growth? Our vision involves three components: 1) delivering exceptional, best-in-class experiences for our customers, 2) recruiting, developing, and retaining the very best people, and 3) delivering outstanding rates of return by growing our bottom line. Our short and long-term growth will be tied to our ability to execute well on each of those dimensions, and we track and hold ourselves accountable to metrics that reflect our success or failure on each. Most importantly, if we can delight our customers and build an exceptional culture, the financial outcomes will come.
Vision meter: Where do you want to be in five years? 10 years? We aspire to be the leading multi-brand franchisee in child enrichment as we believe there is a meaningful overlap in both the target consumer and the core competencies required to provide outstanding services to children.
Do you have brands in different segments? Why/why not? We do not today, but we absolutely think many compelling child-enrichment concepts serve the same end market and have similar operational profiles. Unleashed Brands has built an amazing franchisor business, and we hope to capitalize on a similar strategy and tailwinds.
How is the economy in your region(s) affecting you, your employees, your customers? While we are not immune to recessionary times, child development is one of the first areas parents look to invest in and one of the last they look to cut. Our customers' behavior reflects that dynamic in both good and bad markets.
Are you experiencing economic growth in your market? We believe each of our markets is well positioned for long-term economic growth, particularly within our target demographic.
How do changes in the economy affect the way you do business? We are very focused on where we invest our time and resources in all environments. Economic slowdowns just place an extra emphasis on outstanding programming and a strong team. We believe we provide demonstrably high value to parents, and as a result, our services will be one of the last things they cut from their budget.
How do you forecast for your business? Conservatively. We want to under promise and over deliver in general, and our forecast reflects that DNA.
What are the best sources for capital expansion? Somersault has a highly strategic, flexible capital partner in Hidden River Strategic Capital, which has been an integral part of our growth and development.
Experience with private equity, local banks, national banks, other institutions? Why/why not? Finding the right capital partner is a critical part of building a growth-oriented, best-in-class business. At Somersault, we have partnered with Hidden River Strategic Capital, a Philadelphia area private equity firm that provides customized investments to small businesses. Their collaborative and relationship-driven approach, combined with their flexibility in providing both debt and equity, has been a perfect fit.
What are you doing to take care of your employees? Our employees are the lifeblood of our business. We are constantly looking for ways to better recruit, train, and develop our teams. We recently hosted our second regional off-site meeting, which featured some incredible team building and skills training, and we are planning to invest more there in the coming years.
How are you handling rising employee costs (payroll, minimum wage, healthcare, etc.)? That is a challenge everyone is dealing with. We operate in many different markets around the country with different economic situations. If we can recruit and retain the best people, we believe the economic value will always be there.
What laws and regulations are affecting your business, and how are you dealing with them? While specific regulation varies from state to state, our absolute, unwavering priority is to provide a safe, positive environment for our customers.
How do you reward/recognize top-performing employees? Every way we can. We want our best people to know how much we value them, and we are not afraid to invest in their success. As a growing, multi-unit business, we can offer opportunities for professional growth that single-unit owners cannot.
What kind of exit strategy do you have in place? I hope we can own, operate, and grow this business for years to come.