Behind Smart Fit’s remarkable growth across Latin America stands a distinctive leadership approach cultivated by its founder, Edgard Corona. The “dono da Smart Fit” has developed management principles that have transformed how fitness companies operate, creating a culture that prioritizes employee growth and customer satisfaction above all else.
Breaking Away from Command and Control
Corona’s leadership journey began with a significant shift away from traditional management structures. Around 2003-2004, when Bio Ritmo had approximately 12-13 locations, Corona realized his centralized approach wasn’t sustainable.
“Service businesses can’t rely heavily on command and control,” Corona explains. “Service requires clear indicators of what the team delivers because the moment of truth is exactly that—a moment.”
This insight led him to implement Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a core metric back in 2003, well before it became widely adopted. Rather than dictating solutions to problems, Corona began asking his teams to develop their own approaches based on these clear performance indicators.
“If you tell your team they need to deliver something different, you gather everyone and say, ‘Look, Felipe’s location has a much better score than ours. What do you think we should do?'” Corona describes. This simple question transforms employees from passive followers into engaged problem-solvers.
Creating Pathways for Growth
Smart Fit’s approach to talent development represents another cornerstone of Corona’s leadership philosophy. The company maintains a comprehensive training system often referred to as a “university” with three distinct career tracks.
For fitness professionals, Smart Fit offers technical advancement opportunities guided by educational experts. A second track provides tools for those seeking management careers—from unit manager to regional director and even international roles. The third path supports academically-focused staff pursuing master’s or doctoral degrees.
“These three tracks create a compound of highly qualified people delivering service,” Corona notes. This investment in employee development has yielded remarkable results—many of Smart Fit’s top executives began their careers as gym floor instructors.
“Our operations director for Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama started as a classroom instructor from a Rio de Janeiro community,” Corona proudly shares. “He became a unit manager, then regional manager, and now runs operations for three countries.”
Balancing Freedom with Accountability
Corona believes in giving teams significant autonomy while maintaining clear performance expectations. Smart Fit uses sophisticated technology systems to support local decision-making while ensuring consistent brand standards across 15 countries.
“It’s utopian to think you can centralize an operation of this size—it becomes very expensive,” Corona explains. “So we have few metrics. We measure specific things and seek efficiency levels with degrees of freedom for the teams we’ve trained.”
This balanced approach creates accountability without micromanagement. Teams understand their targets and develop their own methods to achieve them, creating more efficient and adaptable operations across diverse markets.
Through this distinctive leadership philosophy, Edgard Corona has created not just a successful business but a thriving organizational culture. By trusting employees, providing clear growth pathways, and focusing on meaningful metrics, the dono da Smart Fit has established a leadership model that continues to drive remarkable results across multiple countries and cultures.