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324. The Biggest Hiring Mistake Studio Owners Make - And How To Fix It
Episode 324 • 31st August 2025 • Pilates Elephants • Raphael Bender
00:00:00 01:54:02

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We discuss:

  • How to tell if you've made this hiring mistake (you almost certainly have)
  • How to properly filter potential hires
  • Practical steps to get your existing team delivering a consistent high quality experience
  • The exact hiring process we used to set up our studio for growth and retention

Mentioned in this episode:

Get help installing our hiring process in your studio https://pilates.breathe-education.com/mastermind/application

Get help installing our hiring process in your studio https://pilates.breathe-education.com/mastermind/application



This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

AdBarker - https://adbarker.com/privacy

Transcripts

::

Music.

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Welcome to Pilates Elephants. I happen to be here with Heath Lander. Heath.

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Hey, Raph. How are you doing? I'm doing early in the morning. How are you doing?

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I'm doing, getting late in the evening. Yeah.

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Almost all- What are we going to talk about? Yeah, well, almost all Pilates

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studio owners get this wrong. We got it wrong in our studio for years and years.

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And almost everybody I see professionally and also just looking on social media.

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Looking at hiring ads, et cetera, almost everybody still gets this wrong.

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And this is around, if you're getting this wrong as a studio owner,

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you know you're getting it wrong if you have the following symptoms.

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Uh one you stress about your team like you can't find good people you can't keep good people,

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maybe you just can't find enough instructors for

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your team uh and you're

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teaching all of the classes or you know a lot of classes maybe you

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have a team like you know a good size team but

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they're not aligned and you like you honestly wouldn't

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go and you know give your most fastidious client

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you know to any of your instructors and say yeah you have an awesome

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class with with you know with that person uh if you if your clients are churning

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out you know if they're if your cancellation rate is 10 percent is above 10

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per month so for instance if you

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have 50 members if five or more of those members cancel on a given month.

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That's a symptom that you've got this problem. Are there any other symptoms, Heath?

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Yeah, I think that's pretty good. That's a good place to start.

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Yeah. And the problem is you have not – you don't have the skill of hiring,

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training, and leading a team of amazing instructors yet.

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But good news, we're going to fix all that right now.

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In 40 minutes. Yeah. Well, even if it takes 45, I don't mind going over time.

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All right so i think we should probably catch something that if insofar as i've

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got any insight at all to offer to this you're probably a person who's either started a studio,

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or you bought a studio that's a one-man band and your you built your business

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up out of your passion to give positive pilates experiences to people i don't

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have much to say to people who've bought franchises that already have their

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own internal systems that have been built out. Oh, no.

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This applies equally to franchise owners. I know abundant people who run franchises,

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and that's this exact problem. Right, right. Okay, cool.

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To whatever extent I've got any experience or insider expertise,

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mine has all been working with individual solo business owners. Yeah.

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No, this applies equally to franchise owners, and dear franchise owners,

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just stick around, because this is for you too. Yeah, cool.

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So, yeah, Heath, you know, like I think we used to do, when we had a studio,

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well, for the first six, seven years that I had a studio and I don't know, I can't speak for you.

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In your studio, I'm guessing you had this problem for a while.

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First couple of years you ran it. True or false? say

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the problem again like not knowing not knowing how to

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hire train lead and fire when

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necessary a team of the better part

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of the first decade yeah um and so dear listener you know here he's he's here's

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the mindset that that accompanies this problem uh you you're teaching all the

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classes you're working ridiculous hours you're like holy shit i need somebody

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i need some instructors here, like I'm drowning, I'm overwhelmed.

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And you put an ad on social media and the ad says, we're hiring, click here to apply.

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Like that's literally what it says. Or if you...

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If you add a bit more, it might say, we're looking for somebody passionate who loves to teach Pilates.

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It's like, yeah, that describes literally every Pilates instructor.

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So in other words, you put zero filters on your ad.

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You just literally say, okay, if you're a Pilates instructor, I will hire you.

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Or, and this is, I see this a lot with franchise owners as well.

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You put an ad up on some job website, wherever in the world you are,

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there's some kind of job, whether it's like seek.com or idea or whatever it is.

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And you say basically a complete formula, like every other Pilates studio says,

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like looking for comprehensively 450 hour certified instructor,

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you know, must be certified on this apparatus, this apparatus,

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this apparatus, and this apparatus.

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You know, we, you know, we, we like teaching Pilates and we provide safe and

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effective workouts for our clients. If that's you, apply.

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In other words, you're filtering for all the wrong things, the exact same things

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everyone else is filtering for.

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If you find somebody who meets those criteria, they're going to be the exact

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same person teaching at 99 other studios in your area because you're filtering

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for the exact same things that everyone else is filtering for.

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You're either not filtering at all when you hire or you're filtering for the wrong things.

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That's mistake number one. Mistake number two is the mindset around hiring people.

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And Heath, we were talking off-air before we started this, and this was your insight.

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So, you know, because of the gratitude mindset, too much gratitude, essentially.

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Yeah, so how did you explain this before?

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Oh yeah so and this was i certainly lived

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this and i've talked through this with dozens of studio

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owners and like you say so you're you're running

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a studio you've done so many things right

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that you've got too many clients and

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classes to handle for yourself you've got this fantastic problem

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which is that you need someone to help you run your business but by

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the time you recognize that you're pretty much burned out right you're exhausted

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and so then you advertise and as raf says you just

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throw the net as wide as you can because whether you

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realize it or not you're desperate and anyone that applies

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essentially you're grateful that they applied and so

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you're you thank god you're going to help me with my problem and this

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could be that they're a fresh grad and you think awesome they're freshly trained

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they'll know what they're doing or it's someone who's been teaching for 15 20

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25 years and you think fantastic you really know what you're doing and you drop

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them in front of your clients and hey presto your clients go i don't care who

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that person is, they're not doing what you do.

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You just broke your brand. You just put someone in front of your clients who's not doing what you do.

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And when I say this, I mean, I was too busy going, thank goodness I found someone

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who works a few shifts so I can sleep in one day a week.

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Little do I know that they're in there teaching in a way that my clients, hold on a minute.

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I just had two years of Heath every Saturday morning. Now I've got someone doing

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something completely different.

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It's not necessarily bad. It's just different. And people don't like change.

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The other way that manifests is when you might, I mean, and you might have bought

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a studio where there's already, you know, five instructors there.

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Or you might have, you know, gradually hired on people to add extra classes

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and you hired one person to do the mornings, another person to do the evenings

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and whatever, and you gave them new classes.

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So they didn't, you know, the clients in those classes didn't go,

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oh, that's not the owner teaching. I reject that style.

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You've just got Sally teaching the mornings in a contemporary style and Mary

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teaching the evenings in a classical style.

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And then, you know, Fred teaching the lunchtimes, you know, strength-based reformer.

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And, you know, you've essentially got no brand cohesion.

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And so the people who go to the morning classes, if they went to the evening classes,

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they'd be shocked and you know disappointed it's like

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what this isn't even pilates this is crazy like what the heck's going on

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here and so you've essentially build a uh

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just like a a constellation of random

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instructors teaching random different takes on pilates with zero through line

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of like our brand here yeah yeah and what you end up with is such a wide variety

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of styles within the studio.

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The only way you can describe that is to be so broadly generic that you don't

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differentiate from other companies.

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And so then ultimately, you're just in a race to the bottom price because you

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can't say that we do something that they don't do.

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Right. And essentially, I mean, the two massive problems with doing that,

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and it's like, you know, you and I both made this mistake for years.

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And so we speak of what we, that which we know, is the two big,

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massive problems with that issue is number one, you're essentially commodifying what you do.

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You're saying like, there is no brand here.

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All Pilates is the same and equal and lovely and wonderful. And we don't stand for anything.

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We just like whatever is all good. And so anything with the word Pilates in it is totally fine here.

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And so what you're literally doing there is you're saying like,

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well, all Pilates is equally valid.

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It's like, okay, great. And what about the studio that opens up down the block,

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they're equally valid too.

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And the other five studios that open up down the block, they're also equally

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valid. And you can't differentiate and you can't say one thing's better than the other.

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So like you're literally doing the opposite of standing out in the market and

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differentiating yourself.

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You're saying, no, no, we're literally just the same as everybody else because

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we don't have a style here.

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That's problem number one.

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And problem number two is just actually the quality, right?

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So there's branding. There's like, okay, we do classical or we do contemporary

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or we do strength-based reformer or we do high-intensity dynamic reformer.

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Whatever you do, you need to stand for something. And if you think about any

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business that you patronize on a regular level as a client –.

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Okay. Whether that's a restaurant, whether that's a clothing brand,

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whether it's an airline, whether it's, you know, a dance studio,

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like whatever it is, business that you go to, like, do you prefer it when you

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have a consistent experience when you go there?

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Or do you prefer it if you just have a totally random experience every time

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you walk in the door? I mean, fucking do.

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Like, of course, you know, you want to know that you're going to have a consistent

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experience when you, when you go there.

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Like if you go to rent a car and one day they're like, oh yeah we rent you know you

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know mid-sized cars next next week you go back and like oh no we only do pickup

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trucks you know it's like but i

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don't want to pick you know like that's not what i'm here for or if

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you go to a restaurant and it's like you know you go there for your favorite

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spaghetti dish and then you go back again next week and they're like oh no we

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don't serve spaghetti it's a sushi restaurant this week you know because the

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chef who works on wednesdays doesn't know how to uh doesn't know how to cook

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spaghetti they only know how to cook sushi you know it's like That is not how you win clients back,

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right? You have to stand for something.

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So that's the first massive problem is when you just take all comers and don't

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have any through line on what you teach is you don't have a brand.

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And the second thing is you don't have quality. Because even if you are like,

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okay, everybody's classical or everybody's contemporary or everybody's strength-based

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reformer or everybody's dynamic or whatever it is, it's like, well,

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I mean, dear listener, do you believe that literally every classical Pilates

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instructor is equally skilled or are there some better than others?

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And of course, some are better than others.

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In any area of human endeavor, some people are better than others. And-

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Do you want to just randomly throw anyone into that class in front of your clients

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or do you want to have the best ones in your class?

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Yeah, I mean, when you go and buy bananas at the fruit shop,

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do you just literally close your eyes and grab any banana or do you choose the

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ones that are the right amount of ripe?

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Do you discriminate when you buy things? Yes, of course you do. We all do.

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You don't just want literally anything that fits that category of you know,

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whatever it is you're buying.

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So neither do your clients. They don't want just some random instructor.

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They want a really good instructor.

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And so the two massive problems with not selecting very, very stringently and

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just being grateful that anyone's going to teach for you are like,

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you don't have a brand and you don't have quality.

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And by default, that's what happens. Like entropy in the universe always increases.

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Like if you, it's the chance of you just randomly hiring five Pilates instructors

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and them all being amazing dynamic reformer instructors is like one in 20 billion.

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So the chance of them not all being great dynamic reformer instructors is like 19,999,999,999 to one.

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Right so so by default it's

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going to be bad right you have to make it good if

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you want it to be like it's not going to just spontaneously arrange itself

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into order and perfection you have to create that all right so the first problem

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is you just don't have a filter when you hire and the reason and and the reason

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for that is you're like you're very grateful just to get anybody on the schedule

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the third and the flip of that so there's just a catch.

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Sorry, I broke your flow. I can hold that thought. Well,

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so what I see with that, and it's certainly what happened for me,

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is that if you are that person that's built up your business,

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what I've seen time and again is that you fail, through no fault of your own, to recognize,

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identify, and let alone value what it is that you're doing that,

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at a really granular level, differentiates you from other Pilates studios.

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And, you know, as Raf was saying, you might align yourself as contemporary or classical or dynamic.

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You might even be aligned with a Bassi or a Stodd or a Polestar.

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But firstly, your clients don't, nine out of 10 clients don't give a flying

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rat's bottom about that because they don't know what it means.

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It's also other people are saying the same thing.

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The way those brands describe what they do is the exact generic description

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that Raf was talking about earlier. We teach safe and effective Pilates.

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Right where you lengthen and strengthen your muscles with the breath patterns

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connected blah blah blah and then what.

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What the process that i go through when i'm helping people with this problem is.

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The details absolutely matter. And ironically, it's the details that the clients

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recognize, not the branding.

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You know, the website colors, yeah, they might remember, but they don't remember

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the generic terms that you've got on your homepage that you might've got from

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a training provider or from chat GPT.

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What they remember is that you as their instructor have a particular way of

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doing countdowns or you as an instructor always do the same warmup or you as

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an instructor do your long stretch on one spring with a low foot bar every time

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at the beginning. and then you progress from there.

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Whatever those little tiny details are that you've worked out,

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give your clients a good experience, those tiny details compound to become your brand.

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And you have to find ways to describe that. And that's a challenging process.

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But when you can do that, you can tell people what you do. And then you've got

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metrics that you can give to your staff.

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And I'm jumping ahead a bit now to where Raf was going, I think.

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This is what gives you a quality control system are

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you doing x five times every session and

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if you're not you need to yeah and if you're doing you know so yeah

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well i think it's it's fractal which means

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basically it's a recursive pattern that basically like if you look at uh at

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any level of magnification you zoom out you zoom in it's still the same shape

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and so what i mean by that is like dear listener i mean i'm assuming when you

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teach pilates you believe attention to detail is important right when you teach Pilates,

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you're just like, oh yeah, just do whatever. Your form doesn't matter.

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As long as you're on the reform and moving, it's all good.

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Now, not a criticism of that position, but I think it is important to pay attention

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to people's position and alignment and stuff in Pilates.

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I mean, if you don't give a shit about that, it's like, I don't know why you're teaching Pilates.

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So, all right, well, if you think details are important in how you do Pilates

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and how you teach Pilates, why do you then not think it's important to pay attention

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to the details of how your teachers teach Pilates?

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And have them aligned in how they do it.

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If you think it's important to have your feet hip distance apart in footwork,

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well, why are you okay with five different instructors doing five different

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foot positions in footwork just randomly?

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It should be the same. The attention to detail that you have when you're teaching

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your clients should be the exact same level of attention to detail that you

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insist on in how your instructors teach.

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It should be the same, fractal. yeah um so

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the the the two things so far uh

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you don't have the two kind of problems uh you don't have

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a filter when you hire so it's like hey if you're alive and you've got police

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certification you know come teach for me and the second thing is you're you're

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you're too grateful for literally anybody i thank you for coming and saving

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me and taking over my wednesdays uh therefore i'm not going to presume to tell

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you anything about how to teach or anything which leads us to the third point,

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which is lack of leadership.

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And I define leadership here in three sections, essentially,

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which is number one, you have to define the vision.

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You have to say, here's what good looks like here. Here's what we stand for.

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Here's how we do things. A leader has to have a vision to lead people towards.

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The job of the leader is to align the people who are following and unite them

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all towards a shared common goal or vision.

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And so if there is no shared common goal or vision, apart from we teach safe

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and effective Pilates, it's like, well, I mean, that's just on the back of your

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cereal packet. That's not a vision.

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And so you have to define your style. The second one is quality control.

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You have to hold people accountable and help them realize that vision.

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I mean, you have to be the conductor of the orchestra that helps people play

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better than they would play and in more alignment with the other orchestra instruments

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than they would play if there was just no one conducting the whole thing.

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And the third thing is you need to be able to have hard conversations in order to do that.

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And you need to pull on your big girl pants or your big boy pants and say to

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that 15-year instructor, maybe you've only been teaching three years yourself.

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You need to say to that instructor, hey, look, I need you to do it this way.

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And here's why I need you to do it this way. and this is the way we're going to do it here.

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Where do you, do you have any addition, you know, did I miss anything there

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in that definition of leadership and style definition? Yeah.

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No, I think you covered it all.

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An observation, I wish I could go back and tell myself this when I first hired

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people, and I found it to be valuable to tell people and work through in order

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to achieve what you described.

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So what you described covered it all, but just to zoom in a little bit on how

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you do that, if you're the instructor who knows you need to hire someone or

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you've already hired some people.

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Sit down. So one thing is you've probably got one class that is what you built your business on.

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You probably didn't build your business on nine different class types.

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So if you've taught a lot of classes, you've probably got one,

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maybe two class types that really drive your business.

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So sit down and think about those two class types And I would suggest you film

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yourself for multiple iterations and watch the recordings back and look at the

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things that you do consistently.

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So if you record yourself five sessions, those five sessions,

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what are the things that you do in every single session? And you write them down.

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Now, all of a sudden, you've got a list of non-negotiables. So anyone that teaches

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that class has to do those things.

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And then you've got a list of things that are optionals, which maybe they're

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things that you do from time to time, or they're things that you don't mind if people do.

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And then and you there's a third column which

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you could arguably put as your non-negotiables as well but it's easier

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i've found to think of it as you've got your non-negotiables that are included

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and then your unacceptables and these are the things that do not happen in your

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studio now i'm not coming from any position of judgment about what's right wrong

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or not in pilates so if you want breath patterns and they need to be in your

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session then they're in your non-negotiables.

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If you don't care about breath patterns but you don't mind them then you put them in your optionals,

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and if you don't want breath patterns they're in your unacceptables and

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if you do that based on the classes that you've taught that built your

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client base that built out your 70 or 80 percent client retention

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problem of needing new instructors you've

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now got a checklist of things that your class has to include

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and that's the granular beginning of what you then lead from so i i had a lot

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of trouble leading so raf was talking about leadership and being able to you

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know elucidate the vision for people had a real lot of trouble with that i iterated

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i tried I gave it everything I had and what didn't come naturally and it wasn't

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until I just did that process I just described that I realized okay.

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I've tried to sell this big vision of where the business could be and we never

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got there and I never felt really authentic But I can watch someone work with

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my clients and if they don't if they do these three things, I'm then they don't

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have a job and if they don't do these five things and,

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again they don't have a job equally if they do do those five things and they avoid the other three,

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they're probably teaching a class that's very close to what i want and the and and the the

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where the rubber hits the road on that is that was when i found the clients

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came to me and said hey that new instructor is great i mean

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they're not you but it's great and i was like okay cool i've

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found a way to make you close enough to what i need you to be that my

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brand is insulated against your either novice

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or different training methodology and then

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i can lead from that i can sit down and say i watched the recording if

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you teach it did those things that's awesome but also did this thing it's not

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okay that so that that's my two cents worth on it in terms of leadership if

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you're thinking i don't know i don't feel like a leader well then go go from

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the ground up rather than the top down yeah yeah i think that's such an important

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insight and so as we shift gear into like how to fix this, right?

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The first thing, like you said, is to actually define, you know,

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how we do things around here and how we don't do things around here.

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And I think there's a, you know, a mistake a lot of studio owners make is they

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think more variety on the schedule, on the timetable will actually give,

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you know, give them more clients and more attendances.

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Like that is just couldn't be further from the truth. Dear listener.

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I mean, think about, again, any business you patronize, you know,

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whether it's a restaurant, clothing brand, whatever, that's like you go that,

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You don't go to that restaurant because I've got 200 dishes on the menu.

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You go there for your favorite freaking dish that you have every time you go there, right?

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Or like the Vietnamese restaurant that I took my daughter to for the first 10 years of her life.

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They've got 200 things on the menu, but you only go because of the one thing

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that you really love. Exactly.

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Exactly. And so if it's a clothing brand, dear listener, I reckon if you buy

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Lululemon, you probably just don't randomly buy anything from Lululemon.

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You like their leggings or you like their, you know, running shorts or whatever it is.

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Like you, and then when you, if you like their leggings and you also wear running

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shorts, you might buy your running shorts for a different brand.

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You know, because that particular other brand has the type of running shorts

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that you buy and you just always buy that same brand, right?

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So people come back for a consistent experience.

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They don't, people, you don't go somewhere for variety.

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People don't go somewhere for, I mean, think about, and you think about like

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big gyms, they've got like, you know, every machine in the world,

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every class in the world.

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They've got reformer Pilates, they've got saunas, they've got a swimming pool,

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squash courts, you know, acres of gym equipment, whatever. it's like 99.9% of

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people when they go to the gym, they just use the same three machines or go

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to the one same class I always go to.

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People want consistency. They find what they like and they just want like,

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okay, let's just keep doing that.

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99% of the time, that is the truth. And so it's an illusion to think that,

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oh, well, if I've got 75 different class types, that's going to give me more clients.

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No, get known for being really fucking good at one thing and you will have unlimited

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clients because you will be world-class at that.

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Get really good at athletic reform or get really good at classical mat work, whatever it is.

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And so then within that, even if you're like dynamic reformer,

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it's like don't have like five different levels and five different dynamic stretch,

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dynamic sweat, dynamic this, dynamic that.

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It's like, no, just do one type of class, right?

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And if you really, really must like have a beginner's class and then an open level class, right?

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But I mean, if you're just starting out and you only have like 15,

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20-ish classes on your schedule, like all of them should be just open level class, right?

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And so then, like Heath says, you find out, okay, of the 97 different types

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of classes on the schedule, you know, which one is the most popular?

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And it'll be blindingly obvious to you as soon as you look at your numbers on

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attendance of last month or three months, you'll be like, oh,

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you know, my open level classes are 80% full and then my stretch classes are 12% full. You know?

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So let me just throw something in there just to illustrate that.

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So names will be, you know, names will be not revealed to protect the innocent.

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But talking to a studio owner recently who's got this brilliant problem, bursting at the seams,

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growing how do we grow more got to solve the same exactly the

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same problem we're talking about and as we worked through the we did an

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audit class types and one of the class types that

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they were running they were running three of them per week and

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they were running them because the instructors that ran them liked running them

::

and right and

::

i said okay so if those instructors left your studio would you continue running

::

the class and the answer was no i wouldn't it's okay then my question is why

::

on god's earth are you running the class now because you're essentially letting

::

your instructors who have a preference dictate how you identify your brand and

::

if they leave you don't even know what they were doing.

::

Well, it's not a brand then. It's like what we said. It's just a mishmash of,

::

you know, depending on who's teaching on the day, you get steak or sushi or

::

maybe it's, we don't even serve food here today.

::

It's, you know, meditation retreat. Well, even worse than that is if the clients

::

come and build an allegiance to those instructors who are doing this bespoke

::

class that's outside of the actual brand,

::

essentially what you're doing is giving those people free studio space to build their own brand.

::

Right. Well, basically, you're running a steak restaurant, but Tuesday nights

::

with Sally is sushi night, you know.

::

Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah.

::

And no one else on the menu is a sushi chef. No one else in the kitchen knows how to do it.

::

Yeah. So if Sally's sick, well, we've got to cancel, and then you've got grumpy

::

clients anyway, because they're still your clients in terms of who they're paying.

::

And if you fire Sally or she goes, you lose those clients because they're here

::

for the sushi, not for the steak. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

::

All right. So, now, dear listener, if this is you, and it almost certainly is you, okay?

::

Now, I just want to give a little shout-out to the franchise owners and acknowledge here.

::

If you're a franchise owner, well, you probably do have some of these elements

::

that are kind of built into the franchise, right? So, you've got one way of doing things.

::

You've got certain class types that you teach and other class types that you're

::

not allowed to, you know, you can't just randomly teach any shit you want if

::

you're part of a large franchise.

::

So there probably is some kind of formula about how to teach a class in the franchise but you're.

::

Probably completely lacking the right filters when you hire people so you're

::

literally probably one of those people who puts the ad on seek.com and says

::

like wanting 450 hour comprehensively trained instructor must be passionate

::

about pilates must teach a safe and effective class It's like completely generic.

::

Okay. And then you're probably, if you're like 98% of studio owners,

::

probably, almost certainly not quality controlling those classes.

::

And when I say quality control, I mean like auditing the classes,

::

getting feedback from the clients,

::

getting instructors to video their own classes, looking at the class and give

::

it like on a regular basis, like a weekly cadence or biweekly or at the very

::

least monthly per instructor. Yeah.

::

That you look at a class and you give constructive feedback,

::

which is just 100% upfront, like unfiltered, not mean.

::

But when I say not mean, I mean not vicious, intended for the betterment of

::

that person, but not sugar-coated.

::

Just like, hey, you did this, don't do that.

::

Or you didn't do this, I need you to start doing it now.

::

Or you did this this way, don't do it this way, do it this way.

::

Right and if you're hearing what raf saying and it resonates whether you're

::

franchise or independent.

::

Then take a moment and we're just circling back to one of the points Raf made a few minutes ago.

::

Think, okay, if you're resonating with the idea of, okay, I want better quality

::

control, I want better brand identity, then that means doing exactly what Raf said, Raf said,

::

auditing the teaching of your staff, which means in one way or another,

::

depending on how you organize it, you're observing their teaching.

::

If you're running nine different class types then you

::

have to watch people teaching all nine different class

::

types and have crystal clear clarity on

::

what each of those nine different class types should look like and

::

they should differentiate from each other otherwise they become generic within

::

the studio now good luck with that right if you

::

if you're a person that's burned out from teaching too many classes you are

::

not going to have time to all the teaching of nine different

::

class types so three is the absolute maximum

::

of class types as far as i'm concerned because that's

::

the upper limit of what you can reasonably audit even

::

if you um distribute the auditing process out

::

to your staff where they self self-reflect regularly i

::

think three's too many i think two's the absolute yeah exactly i totally

::

agree like i get i mean i agree but i've kind

::

of kind of got to err if okay sometimes i really want to stretch session and

::

a beginner and my general class like oh okay yeah but

::

but but like if stretching is important to

::

you just do some stretching in every class like yeah like

::

you're preaching to the converter i was just trying to you know if you're talking

::

to a club pilates franchise owner they've got to have nine different class types

::

they actually have to do that or whatever it is seven you know i don't know

::

but if you're running your own business like one is enough two is too many and

::

then because you If you're going to achieve what Raf was describing,

::

you have to do that for every instructor that's delivering every single class type.

::

And the other thing about that to remember, too, is that if you're teaching

::

10 classes out of 50 per week, you're teaching 20% of the classes in your studio.

::

That means 80% of your delivery is being done by other people.

::

And so I've kind of skipped on to the problem of the person who's wanting to

::

grow their business, but it's the same conversation.

::

If you're teaching 20, 40 per week and you're about to open another studio and

::

you've got 40 classes there, you're going to go from 50% of delivery to 25%

::

of delivery. And so that compounds the problem.

::

And you're not going to have one instructor take over the whole studio.

::

So let alone you think you're going to expand your studios to multiples,

::

your systems have to be all the more clear, more granular, and more robust because

::

you're going to be teaching less percentage-wise of all the classes delivered.

::

And that's the same as if you just hire three to five instructors when you've

::

been teaching on your own or with one other.

::

You're going to go from 50% of delivery to 20% if you're lucky.

::

And so if you don't know exactly what should be happening in the classes and

::

have a way to assess that, it's very quickly going to devolve into what we described

::

at the beginning, where it's just a melange of people's personal styles.

::

Right. And that is the default because entropy always increases.

::

That's literally one are the foundational laws of physics.

::

And what that means is basically by default things turn to chaos disorder and they fuck up basically.

::

Like if you want order and quality, that's not the default. You have to create that actively.

::

That's not, you know, if you throw the Lego bricks up into the sky,

::

the likelihood that they spontaneously fall down and assemble themselves into the...

::

Something like is is very

::

very very low it's essentially non-existent the likelihood that they fall in

::

a chaotic jumble on the floor is like a billion to one right and so if you just

::

invite random people into your studio have seven different class types and just

::

go to the classrooms over there go for it you're essentially just throwing the

::

lego bricks up into the sky and hoping they fall down you know in the in a perfect

::

you know assembled you know,

::

you know like lego house or whatever and it's like yeah that's not gonna fall

::

into the death The Death Star. The Death Star, okay.

::

That was the ultimate Lego thing when I was a kid. You just remember one of

::

the Death Star. Or the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower's pretty good.

::

My daughter's boyfriend's got a Lego Eiffel Tower. It's a centerpiece of his

::

extensive Lego collection.

::

All right, so you have to create the order. It's not going to create itself, right?

::

If you're not actively doing this, I can tell you with 100% certainty,

::

you've got chaos, right?

::

Because if you're not creating the order, there is no order because it's not

::

going to spontaneously happen.

::

Now, even if you've got five amazing instructors, they're certainly teaching, which is impossible,

::

because by default, if you haven't filtered for people, it's like you're not

::

going to get amazing instructors because in fact,

::

you certainly aren't going to get amazing instructors because amazing instructors

::

are attracted to, guess what, a really freaking clear vision with someone with

::

very, very high standards.

::

And if you've just said like, okay, if you're a 450 hour certified instructor,

::

like the same as every other ad or if you just said like if you're

::

an instructor then it's

::

like well you're not communicating any high standards and you're not going to attract those

::

people who want to be the best so what

::

you have to do is number one define your style like he said okay and the way

::

you do that is you you film yourself like when you teach dear listener if you're

::

the most popular instructor in your in your studio which 99 chance you are if

::

you're the owner uh by definition you are a better instructor if you're most popular, right? And...

::

And you almost certainly have some kind of script that you use.

::

Now, it might not be a written script, a literal script, but it is a script in your brain.

::

Like when you cue long stretch, you almost certainly cue it basically the same

::

way every time you teach it.

::

When you teach footwork, you almost certainly teach it the same way every time you teach it.

::

And so when you teach, and not only the way that you teach each exercise,

::

but probably the way that you string exercises together.

::

Right so you probably when you you probably

::

have favorite little sequences of moves like you probably go from footwork to

::

something else lying on the carriage you probably don't go footwork to

::

lunges to reverse knee stretches to you know snake and then back to legs in

::

straps right with maybe long box in between there somewhere like you know one

::

exercise in each position right i'm hoping you don't right because it doesn't

::

flow very well right so you probably have like default sequences that you often teach.

::

You found like these moves go well together, right? And each move you teach,

::

you probably have basically a script that you press a button inside your brain

::

and the words come out to teach that move.

::

So you do have a script, right? Maybe it's not written on paper, but you do have a script.

::

So what you need to do is write it on paper, right? And film it and turn it into an actual script.

::

And like Heath said, look at the classes as an aggregate, like look at four

::

or five classes and go, okay, every single class, Like sometimes I taught footwork,

::

sometimes I didn't, but we always did legwork of some description, right?

::

You know, so that becomes a non-negotiable, right? So you don't have to teach

::

footwork, but you have to do something that works the legs.

::

And so whatever your non-negotiables are, like Heath said. And then the second

::

thing is you have to do QC, which just means quality control,

::

which just means like doing the class or watching the class and giving honest feedback.

::

And the feedback should be very, very straight up. It should be delivered with

::

neutral emotion. So no, you're not saying you're a good instructor or you're a bad instructor.

::

You're saying this thing that you did was good or this thing that you did was

::

bad. So don't do that thing. Do this thing instead.

::

Yeah. And Raph, let's just catch that. Just so that we see the link between

::

the first point and that point is when you've established those non-negotiables

::

and the optionals and the unacceptables, that becomes quite literally a checklist.

::

Yes. That you then look at. So when Raf says you give feedback and it's clear,

::

it's not sugar-coated and it's direct, it's objective and it's non-personal,

::

you're not making that shit up on the spot.

::

You're watching a video or you're reflecting on notes that you took as you attended

::

and simply saying, these are the non-negotiables.

::

You did five out of the seven, fuck yeah.

::

And here's two you didn't do. We need to address that. Do you need support?

::

And here's the unacceptables. You didn't do any except for this one.

::

So please stop doing that.

::

So it's not, you don't have to, it's not, it's not, you might find it's a difficult

::

conversation, but it's not a difficult open-ended conversation.

::

It's a structured conversation based on key metrics. Right. It's a checklist.

::

It literally is a checklist.

::

You know, did you do these five things? Did you not do these five things,

::

these other five things?

::

Easy, you know, like it's very, very simple. but then you have to,

::

in order to do this, you need to do the last thing which is pull on your big

::

girl panties and have hard conversations with people and those hard conversations

::

are going to be like, hey Sally,

::

you've been teaching here for three years and I've never done your class,

::

and you've been teaching like God knows what in that session,

::

because I've never done it so I don't know.

::

And that's been my bad because I haven't given you any kind of leadership or

::

feedback or North Star about how we teach here.

::

That's changing now. And we're going to define our style and this is what the style is going to be.

::

And if you want to learn to teach that way and if you want to become a better

::

instructor as defined by one, teaching that style and two, having full classes,

::

then fuck yeah, let's work together and get you there, train you up.

::

And if that doesn't align with how you want to work or how you want to progress

::

your own skills then that's totally fine as well but this isn't going to be

::

a good fit you need to move on.

::

I'm working, well, we're working with a studio at the moment who's in a country

::

known as New Zealand, honorarily Australian.

::

And this studio's owner has been going for, I think it's better part of 10 years,

::

running 60 plus classes a week. And the studio owner teaches about five.

::

And so we went through this process that we're talking about.

::

And what was interesting about

::

that process was when we talked about what's your brand

::

she was she was really unclear on that and when we talked about

::

the process that raf described her eyes lit up she

::

was like this is exactly what i need i've got all these great instructors that

::

i love i love what they do but

::

there's no through line there's no consistency and when

::

we worked it out when we went through this process i was like oh right so

::

you're teaching five classes a week out of 60 plus an

::

extra studio that's just opened that's already scaling to about 30 so

::

you're teaching like five percent of all

::

the classes taught and you've got team members who teach 25

::

and so the process for her was she actually filmed her lead instructors rather

::

than herself and she built the through line out of what they were doing well

::

and then sat down with them and said we're going to clarify our brand and i'm

::

building it out of what you do Do you want to join me on this?

::

And not surprisingly, they all said, hell yeah, because they were being brought into the process.

::

And so we've gone through this development process and we're running the workshops.

::

I do it with the studio owner and then with the team as organized, as needed.

::

So I guess I'm just, I just wanted to catch this because what we've talked about

::

so far is very owner centric and you're driving it and you do absolutely have

::

to drive it, but it doesn't mean you have to be, it's not adversarial to your team.

::

If as Raf was just saying, the team is aligned with your vision.

::

So, and when you've got clarity and you can put the flag in the ground and say,

::

this is what I want to achieve.

::

If you're with me and we're clear on what success looks like,

::

and that means outcomes and processes, if we're all aligned on that,

::

now all we have to do is just build objective systems sorry objective

::

processes like self-reflective and uh feedback-based

::

processes that check that we're all moving in the direction we need

::

to so yeah it's this i just

::

want to the process that raf and i are kind of referring to it doesn't have

::

to be um all top down so if you've got a team or even just a couple of instructors

::

that you feel really passionate about you can bring them into that process but

::

but what's not negotiable is that you come up with what we've been talking about.

::

Crystal clear clarity about what happens in your classes, the experience your

::

clients have, and what doesn't happen in your studio.

::

Right. And in fact, within our own business, that's how we do it.

::

So I'm the CEO of this company, but actually Heath's the one running the quality

::

control on the trainers.

::

And we're defining good training as training the way Heath trains.

::

So even though I'm the owner, and I'm a thousand percent aligned with Heath's

::

way of teaching, obviously.

::

Heath's actually a better Pilates teacher at this point than I am.

::

And Heath teaches more classes than I do. And Heath's the one running the team

::

and defining the standards of quality.

::

And so if you're a studio owner and you've got a person on your team that you

::

have that level of trust, that I've won their skill.

::

When I say trust, I mean trust in their skills, right? Not just trust in their integrity.

::

I mean, if you don't trust their integrity, they shouldn't be on your team at

::

all. but I mean trusting their skills that you would,

::

actually back them to be at the minimum as good as you, probably better than

::

you at what you do best, you know, in terms of teaching. Right.

::

And there's, there's a, I think the, the test here is there was a great,

::

I follow the UFC, the ultimate fighting championship.

::

It's kind of like my sport as a spectator that I like to enjoy.

::

I'm not really into football or whatever.

::

And there was, there was this, this reporter asked the president of the UFC one time,

::

If you had to pick one person to fight on your behalf to save your life,

::

if your life was on the line and there was just this one person there to defend you,

::

who would you pick? And he was like, oh, John Jones.

::

Zero hesitation. That man, John Jones is, I think, still the light – no,

::

he actually just retired as a light heavyweight champion, basically undefeated

::

after 30 title defenses.

::

He's basically annihilated everybody he's ever fought.

::

And so if you have that level of trust, like if you would send,

::

you know, if I said to you like, okay, I'm going to send your most,

::

you know, this person is going to come and write you like the most scathing

::

Google review or the most, you know,

::

complimentary Google review is going to make or break your business.

::

And you can't teach, I can only send that person to like one instructor in your

::

business and you can't brief that instructor ahead of time, right?

::

Like, do you have someone on your team that you'd be like, oh yeah,

::

go to Sally's class, like total confidence like yeah if you have that person,

::

that's that's the level of confidence I have in Heath and that's the level of

::

confidence you need to have in somebody for them to be the person that you model your business off,

::

the John Jones level. Yeah, agreed. Yeah.

::

And if you've got that person and if you're in that, if you're running a studio

::

and you've got that person, that you need to, you know, like that they are the, that's a rare thing.

::

So you need to hold onto that and value that.

::

All right. And so what is the mindset shift? because we've given all of the

::

practical advice, okay?

::

So you've got to, well, when you, all right, so actually we haven't given some

::

of the practical advice because we've got to now go back and talk about,

::

okay, so when you are hiring, okay, what filters do you put in place?

::

And when you, so in your ad, for example, and when you interview people,

::

like what mindset do you have instead of gratitude?

::

You know, how do we modify that and get the right people in?

::

And then what is the mindset shift or how do you make that mindset shift?

::

Because I know, like putting myself in my shoes a decade ago when I was making all these mistakes.

::

I would have listened to this episode and gone like, that all sounds great,

::

but I'm fucking terrified and I feel massive imposter syndrome to go and have

::

those conversations with this instructor that's been teaching for like five

::

times longer than I have.

::

And her classes are full, but she teaches just a completely different style to what we teach here.

::

Or even if there's that one instructor on your team and it's like their classes aren't full, right?

::

It's just a very hard, it's a hard sort of psychological hump to get yourself over.

::

So what are the, like when, let's start at the start with the filtering when you're writing a job ad.

::

So instead of saying, we're hiring, click here to apply, or we're hiring looking

::

for 40, 450 hour comprehensively instructor must like to teach safe and effective Pilates.

::

Like what do you say in your job ad to attract the right people and consequently

::

repel the people who are not going to be a good fit?

::

Uh, well, all right. So I haven't, this is kind of funny for me.

::

I haven't actually done this because I've been blessed with having worked at

::

Breathe Education for the last 12 plus years.

::

So when, when I've wanted new staff, I've always been lucky enough to be able

::

to draw them from graduates within the program.

::

But when I've worked with instructors on this, sorry, when I've worked with

::

studio owners on this, essentially the job ad is your list of non-negotiables.

::

So you just take the list of things that you've identified as what has to happen

::

in your class and you build them, maybe you use ChatGPT to help,

::

into a description of the job.

::

And then when people apply, your time is incredibly valuable.

::

So you don't meet with everyone that applies. You don't meet with everyone that

::

tells you how much they love the studio.

::

When someone applies, you say back to them, thanks so much for your application.

::

How many classes have you done at the studio? And if the answer is none,

::

you put a line through that name.

::

If the answer is five, you say, okay, great. I'll send you a video of me teaching.

::

And then you, when you're ready to teach me the way I'm teaching in the video,

::

you let me know when you're ready to come in.

::

So you at the door you build a wall that says

::

this is how we do things and it might not be as it might

::

not simply be that you send them a video you might send them a brand description

::

blah blah blah but what i

::

ended up in a queuing script right right so

::

it's not just a video but like okay here's the video here's the

::

the queuing script of what i said in the video and here's the exercise list

::

with when you're ready to come in with the spring show exactly everything when

::

you're ready to come in and teach me to that script give me a call and we'll

::

make a time and i'll give you 15 minutes and then if they come in and they teach

::

anything other than what you ask them to teach.

::

That's a red flag a line goes through that name because you are clear with them

::

that what you are asking them to do in their interview is to demonstrate to

::

you their ability to teach the way you need them to teach in your studio and

::

that's a huge paradigm shift for everyone i've ever worked through with it.

::

Yeah. I think, so there are two things I would pull out of that,

::

which I agree 100% with everything you said.

::

But I think the first thing you said is like, you don't know,

::

you know, because you've basically hired people, graduates.

::

I think, well, that is the secret. So the first secret is like where you go

::

to find people, okay, when you're hiring.

::

And so instead of just like putting an ad on seek.com or whatever,

::

right, that is like, there were three ways you can basically hire.

::

One is you can promote from within, essentially like, you know,

::

your best clients or whatever, you can actually just get them trained up.

::

Second one is you can do a job ad.

::

Okay. And the third one is you can poach. You can actually approach somebody

::

who's working somewhere else and say, hey, come work for me. Okay.

::

And all three can work and you can do all three. Like they're not mutually exclusive.

::

They all have their pros and cons. But I think generally the more you leverage

::

your network, the better chance you have of getting somebody aligned.

::

So the network would be like your clients, okay, your instructors.

::

The more you like have a personal connection with that instructor so that you're

::

selecting them rather than just like casting it out and going,

::

hey, anybody who's interested, come along and let me know.

::

So if you like go around, so I had a conversation with someone yesterday on

::

one of the coaching calls.

::

She's looking for instructors and finding it hard to find someone.

::

And so what I coached her on was poaching.

::

Um so i said like go around you know

::

look on look on the reviews for the other studios around

::

you look at the look at the waitlist look at which classes are waitlisted look

::

at the instructors who are mentioned in the reviews go do those

::

people's classes if you go do their class and you're like holy shit yeah this

::

person's really the real deal right and i would love to have this person teaching

::

at my studio based on the reviews the waitlist and my personal experience of

::

them teaching right then like approach that person after class and say hey i

::

own xyz studio i've stalked you on social media I know you teach at A,

::

B and C studios I know you're waitlisted I just did your class you're really

::

freaking good and I would love to have you come work with me,

::

What would it take for you to quit those other studios and come work for me?

::

And, you know, obviously you would say as part of that, it's like we teach XYZ

::

style, you know, we teach classical, we teach dynamic reform,

::

we teach whatever, right?

::

And I'm looking for somebody who is hungry to be even better than what you already are.

::

And we do weekly, you know, coaching or bi-weekly coaching or whatever it is.

::

And I will audit your classes on the regular and I will help you become even better.

::

Like and by the way i pay top of market like whatever

::

you're getting paid there i'll pay you more are you in

::

right now that's a very very

::

compelling offer and what a lot of what a

::

lot of uh studio owners do is if they do leverage

::

a network at all they just kind of text people and go like

::

oh could you spare me a few classes a week and

::

then instructors get back and go like oh yeah no i'm really busy at the moment it's

::

like yeah but like what if you quit all of the other shit jobs that you

::

have and came and worked here you know

::

so so yeah so it's basically where you

::

go number one you i would i would go to you to poaching

::

if you're desperate and you need someone yesterday because you'll get someone

::

who's really good if you actively filter and go and actually do their class

::

and look at the reviews and the waitlist and you go yeah fuck this person's

::

really good i'd like to have them teaching in my studio then you will get someone

::

who's really good because you know they're really good because you did their

::

class the second thing which is much slower,

::

but also very, very high chance of getting someone awesome is promote one of your clients.

::

Like if somebody had been in the front row of your group reformer class three

::

times a week for the last six months, it's like they're already a true believer in what you do.

::

And all they need is some teaching skills. So you just got to like...

::

Tap them on the shoulder, ask them if they're interested, and then train them up.

::

And so, you know, that takes a long time, like it might take six months for

::

that person to certify, okay, and you have to mentor them up and it's more work,

::

but you will get a, you know, fanatical true believer instructor who teaches

::

exactly how you want them to teach if you do that process, right?

::

And then the third way is to advertise. And if you advertise,

::

again, you should use your network, you know, like, so don't,

::

like, yes, advertise on, you know, random job websites, but look,

::

advertise in Pilates forums.

::

Put your job ad, like, give it to all your clients and say, do you know anyone

::

who might be interested? Give it to your instructors, ask them if they know

::

anyone who might be interested.

::

If any way you can leverage your network, you will get better connections than

::

by just randomly throwing it out there.

::

All right. And then like Keith said, you've got to say, okay,

::

here's what we do, here's what we don't do.

::

And then you've got to talk about the benefits to that person,

::

which is the final thing, which is like, okay, you will get top of industry pay.

::

And dear listener, I advocate that you should paid type of industry,

::

not because I think it's fair or ethical or moral or makes you a good person,

::

just because that means you'll get the best instructors.

::

If you want great instructors, you can't pay worse than the studio up the road.

::

You have to offer very competitive salary. So basically, you have to figure

::

out what the other studios around you pay, and you've got to pay just a little bit more than that.

::

And then also the mentoring and the stringent quality standards and being clear on what you stand for.

::

We are a classical studio. We don't do dumbbells on the reformer or we are a

::

strength-based reformer studios, we do dumbbells on the reformer.

::

Just stand up for what you stand for and be clear that if you love that,

::

come here because we love it.

::

If you don't love it, totally fine. Not a fit.

::

How do you – I think that kind of covers the gratitude part as well. Yeah.

::

I just want to say, when you're drowning and you're teaching all the classes

::

and you're overwhelming, like, holy shit, I just need, I'm burning out here,

::

I've got to get someone's.

::

I've made this mistake so many times that finally I've learned my lesson,

::

I think, is do not make a desperation higher.

::

I promise you, dear listener, I promise you, you will regret it.

::

I promise you will regret it. Do not make a desperation higher.

::

You have to hold your standards even when you're drowning.

::

Yeah. And you'd be, again, I didn't do this. I didn't know this,

::

but I've worked with people and we have done this and we've seen that it's better.

::

You're better off to say to your clients that no one loves you.

::

I'm burned out. I'm taking a 10 day break and going to Bali.

::

I'll be back in 10 days. I'll spend all your memberships. You're better off

::

doing that than taking someone that you haven't filtered for and trusting them

::

with your clients that you've spent two years building up.

::

And the clients will come back to you if you tell them the honest truth about

::

where you're at if you put someone in front of them that essentially devalues

::

their relationship with you you it takes a long time to get that back.

::

And spinning off of that you know to what raf was what you're talking about raf,

::

and so if you're if any if you're out there and you're hearing this and you're

::

thinking hell me that's me um it's sort of extrapolating from that idea of tell

::

your clients you're going to go away for 10 days rather than putting anyone in front of them,

::

is if any of the processes that we're talking about resonate and you think,

::

hell yeah, I want to do that, I want to work through that.

::

If you're working 15, 20, 25 classes a week, those processes aren't something

::

you do just quickly in the morning over a cup of coffee.

::

You do a little bit regularly over the course of the next three,

::

four, five, six, seven, eight weeks, and you build those things out.

::

And we're talking about recording for yourself, watching yourself back,

::

doing that multiple times.

::

So whether you do it on your own or you do it with someone like Raph and I as a mentor.

::

If you want to achieve that, don't think it's going to happen overnight.

::

But also it will happen very quickly when

::

you understand what it is you're setting out to achieve

::

so it's sort of like you know it's not going to happen overnight but

::

the changes will be um that will compound very

::

quickly to identifying your brand to attracting people

::

you want to work with to creating quality standards within your studio

::

to creating a situation where you can actually leave someone in front

::

of your your favorite clients for whom

::

you are the instructor and you can take that break it will

::

compound really quickly if you just work from ground up

::

brand yeah what do you do that identifies your classes

::

write it down share it with the people that you're

::

working with if they want to come with you great if they don't say goodbye you

::

know all of those things it's it's a process

::

that you know it's relatively quick but it's

::

not overnight that's the way to say it yeah yeah i

::

agree you know you need to take your time in the beginning

::

to actually reflect and get really clear on what you want

::

and what you stand for and where you're going and what you won't tolerate once you

::

get that it it it's quite quick to actually

::

make the change yeah uh i just realized

::

just it's the it's the foundations of the building

::

if you if you ever if they've ever built flats across from

::

your studio you know that for like a year there seems

::

to be nothing going on because they're just digging a fucking great hole and

::

putting concrete in it and then in the last six months suddenly there's 40 stories

::

you know that's that i think that would be the metaphor you take the time on

::

the foundations that the stuff that's

::

more visible happens quickly and effectively right and you're you're.

::

Mention of taking 10 days off in Bali, actually, I realized that we forgot one

::

symptom at the beginning of this,

::

which is you couldn't go away because there's no one to take over your classes.

::

Maybe there are humans, but your clients wouldn't accept them.

::

It's like, oh, I teach a special way and I'm actually literally better than

::

everybody else in the studio.

::

And so therefore, there's no one in the studio I trust with my clients for a

::

couple of weeks, right? So that would be another symptom.

::

And just to round it out, I'm assuming you've got a call on it to go to RAF,

::

but... No, my friends are good.

::

Oh, cool. So I've seen this in my studio and it took me far too many years to

::

get there and I've seen it much more quickly with studio owners that I've worked with.

::

Put these processes in place and you implement them.

::

There is a there is a moment in time coming and

::

this is talking to the the point raf just made retrospectively is

::

when it when it when you a client comes to you

::

and you're covering for an instructor who works for you and a client comes up

::

to you and says hey that class was really good you weren't as good as tegan

::

but that was all right and you realize okay i've trained one to be better at

::

this thing than I am for that client so that I'm the ring-in.

::

That's when you know you've done something really right. Now you've built a brand and a system.

::

And I'm 100% certain that if I went and taught a teaching workshop in our certification,

::

that would be the feedback I'll get.

::

Like, oh yeah, that was pretty good. Not as good as Nicole, but not bad. Not bad for the new guy.

::

All right. So two things I want to talk about. One is,

::

How do you make that mindset shift from like, I'm, I'm butterworm,

::

you know, I wouldn't presume to tell my instructors how to suck eggs.

::

You do you boo, um, free for all, everybody does whatever they want to like,

::

actually, no, I'm going to lead this team and I'm going to define what good looks like here.

::

And if you're in, you're in great. If not, that's also great, but you're not in.

::

So how do you make that mindset shift? And the second thing is like,

::

well, what if this is all great?

::

We say, don't make a desperation higher, set your standards,

::

blah, blah, blah. What if you've already dug the hole, right?

::

And you've got five people working for you.

::

And when you honestly reflect, like none of them are a good fit, you know?

::

So, so first thing is like, how do you make the mindset shift from,

::

from not being, not leading, not take, not being the leader to being the leader?

::

Yeah. All right. My two cents on that in this context is it spins off what Raph

::

was saying. what we said at the beginning there are so many ways to do Pilates.

::

If you want someone to work for you or if someone's already working for you.

::

And it's your business, then it's your business to make sure that you all know

::

what happens in your business.

::

And I think Raph said this earlier, that doesn't mean that what other studios do is wrong or shit.

::

It's just that you are super clear on what happens in your business.

::

So if someone comes to you with 15 years of experience,

::

I had this experience and I was the

::

grateful one that i'm but a worm as raf said i was

::

desperate a person came to my studio i was

::

burned out i was teaching like 50 plus hours a week i was

::

just completely wiped out and this person said i can teach 20 classes a week

::

i've been teaching for 20 years and i bowed down in gratitude and six weeks

::

later i had to let them go because they were teaching stuff that was not aligned

::

with what i was doing and that was the first real wake-up call i had to there

::

is something that i do that's not the same as other people.

::

And I had to get clear on, it doesn't mean that I think I'm better.

::

It just means that I've made a promise to my clients that they will get an experience.

::

I have to validate that promise or I will not have a business.

::

And so that was for me, the first step to being able to have that mindset shift

::

of there's Pilates, there's Pilates, there's Pilates, there's Pilates.

::

But what happens in these four walls has clear parameters.

::

And you could have been teaching for 20 years or five years or five months but

::

i'm i am the keeper of those standards until someone else is better at it than

::

me that was that was it and the person the other part of that the person with

::

the highest standards should be the one leading the team.

::

Right once you're clear on what the standards look like because you don't want

::

someone coming in with high standards about things that aren't part of your

::

standards because other people will

::

have standards, but it's got to be the standards that define your brand,

::

which brings us back to spend the time identifying what it is that makes your brand special.

::

And the other one, just on that paradigm, on that mind shift, for me, a big one was –.

::

I felt grateful that people were coming to help me out with my problem.

::

And even saw that that was costing me clients, like Raph said,

::

I couldn't bring myself to have that difficult conversation.

::

And then I read a book by Adam Grant, and I can't remember the name of the book.

::

I'm Googling like crazy. I think it was called Give and Take.

::

And he puts this idea forward that there are givers and there are take,

::

but his research showed that you can be selfish or you can be otherish.

::

And when i was having to steal myself

::

for difficult conversations one of the things that i i learned from that book

::

was that people who are selfless which is if you're the person who thinks heaven

::

forbid that i tell you do you're not doing what i want because you you're so

::

kind of you're being selfless rather than selfish what they did in the the studies

::

that they when they looked at that,

::

was if if they took a selfless person and put them in a negotiation situation if they negotiated for.

::

They were uh that they

::

were um ineffective ineffective thanks

::

but if they were told that the negotiation position

::

was uh you know what was dependent on that negotiation was their child's welfare

::

or the well-being of their mother all of a sudden they negotiated a lot harder

::

and so if we're talking about how to facilitate that mindset shift and you're

::

a person that has trouble sort of telling people what to do,

::

well then, if you're running a business, why are you running a business?

::

You don't run a business as a charity. You're running a business so that you

::

create a, you exchange your goods or services to create profit so that you can

::

improve the lives of the people, of your life, of your employees, of your family.

::

And so that was something that helped me. It was like, okay,

::

I would like my daughter to have X, Y experiences in her life. Okay, great.

::

This conversation will help my business move forward to a point where it's more

::

profitable and I work less in that profit-making process.

::

I get to spend more time with my daughter. And all of a sudden,

::

it was a lot easier to say, okay, we need to talk about how you're running your

::

classes because you've got 30% capacity and we're not making money until you're at 65% capacity.

::

So we've got to take some steps to get to 65%. And in the back of my mind,

::

I was thinking, so that test gets to go to school.

::

Yeah. I think that is a really powerful reframe.

::

And I think the way I think of it is that as the leader of the business,

::

the business is your responsibility.

::

It's your job to care for the business and do things in the best interest of the business.

::

And when I say the best interest of the business, I mean all of those people

::

that you mentioned, the staff of the business, the customers of the business,

::

and also the owners, the owner of the business.

::

And so because if you don't have a successful profitable business or you close

::

the doors and none of your clients can get all those benefits of pilates all

::

of instructors lose their job you lose your house your kids you know can't go

::

on their holidays whatever it is so like,

::

prerequisite number one of anything good happening in the business is that the

::

business continues to exist.

::

And the way to ensure that the business continues to exist is that the business is profitable.

::

And the way to ensure that the business is profitable, one of the most important

::

pillars, is that you are differentiated from your competitors.

::

You're not a me too brand that is exactly the same as every other Pilates studio

::

in a 10 mile radius and not in a race to the bottom with your prices.

::

And in order to do that, you have to build a clear vision of what you stand

::

for and what you don't stand for.

::

And you need everybody in lockstep on that vision.

::

And a business is a team. It's a team sport.

::

You have a group of people working together towards a shared direction,

::

a shared goal, a shared vision.

::

And it's your job as the leader to be the conductor of that orchestra,

::

you know, to make that happen.

::

And you need to do it to protect the business because the business is the vehicle

::

for your clients, your staff and yourself and your family to achieve all of

::

those wonderful things that you get from Pilates.

::

And I just think of, you know, when I need to have a hard conversation,

::

I think like, well, you know, I'm doing this for my clients.

::

If I have to like let a person go or give them some feedback that might be difficult

::

for them to hear or whatever, I think like, well,

::

I'm doing this so that my clients can have the experience that I want them to

::

have, or I'm doing this so that the other people on the team,

::

you know, continue to have jobs and can pay their mortgage and put food on the

::

table for their families because I have to look after, I have to protect the business,

::

right, for all of those, for the common good of all of those other people.

::

So I think that's a really, really, really powerful frame.

::

How do you then, what do you do if you've, and ultimately, I mean, I think,

::

You have to do it scared.

::

And the idea that you need to somehow be ready to do it before you do it is a mistake.

::

You won't be ready until you do it. It's like, okay, that's the when then fallacy,

::

which basically says, okay, after I'm strong, I will go to the gym.

::

After I'm cured, I will go to the hospital.

::

Once I'm rich, I will start to save money.

::

Uh you know once my you know once once

::

i lose weight i will start to eat healthy you know it's like no that's back

::

to front okay and so saying like when i'm when i'm ready and psychologically

::

ready to be a leader then i will lead is back to front because had how you how

::

you get good at this when i say good at this i mean like it doesn't freak you the fuck out.

::

Okay how you get good at it is by doing it you know

::

how do you get good at doing teaser do teasers right the

::

first time you do a teaser you suck probably the 50th time you still suck

::

but at some point you can do it and then

::

it doesn't suck and you get to a point where you're like oh this is pretty good

::

i'm good at it doesn't feel bad feels good looks good is good

::

and that's the same with having difficult conversations the first

::

time you'll suck it'll be terrifying you probably mess it up by the

::

time you get to the 50th 100th time it's it's no big deal

::

it doesn't it doesn't bother you you've done

::

the reps you've built that muscle and so the

::

the the mindset shift is not like i'm i feel confident i'm ready to do this

::

you know the mindset shift is no i'm just going to fucking do it scared because

::

i've got to protect the business and my family and my clients and the other

::

staff and it's just like this is what a leader does and i've got to do it because

::

i'm the fucking leader and how i feel about it is completely fucking irrelevant.

::

So what do you do if you've already dug the hole, right?

::

You've got this UDA, you've been running it for a few years,

::

whether you inherited a team or you've hired the wrong people or a bit of both,

::

and you've just got a bunch of people working for you.

::

And there's at least that one person that you're like, I know in my heart,

::

that person's got to go. And I've known that for a long time,

::

if I'm honest with myself.

::

And there might be a few other people that you're thinking like,

::

okay, yeah, they're good. They're not great.

::

You know, I wouldn't, they're not John Jones level. They're not like,

::

okay, if my kid's life was on the line and I had to send my clients into one

::

instructor's class, I couldn't brief that person beforehand.

::

It's like, no, I wouldn't feel great about sending them to these people's classes.

::

But potentially we could train them up.

::

Maybe you've got one or two instructors that you're like, yeah,

::

that person's awesome. Or maybe you don't.

::

But basically you've got a mess. So what do you do if you've already got a mess?

::

Yeah well we're working with that situation

::

at the moment and if you've got a mess

::

but you've also got the problem of the mess then something's working for you

::

because if you don't have the problem you don't have a business so if you've

::

got the problem of the mess then you're running a business that's generating

::

enough revenue and or profit that you recognize the problem and you've got the

::

opportunity to clear up the mess because if you haven't got that,

::

then you haven't got a business so that's the good news and then

::

if you've got if you do have a mess and you're

::

thinking i want to move forward and as

::

if you're in a if you're in a market or a location where other

::

studios are popping up and maybe you've been one of one or two for

::

the last two or three or four five years and this is really common and people

::

feel afraid of like oh god here comes competition i'm

::

going to be dead in the water well no

::

the first thing is that's good news right more studios means more people know

::

that there's pilates out there and if there's three studios that's the that's

::

your opportunity to differentiate yourself from the other two and so if you've

::

got that problem which is the mess well then your opportunity.

::

Is to clarify the mess and that for me

::

that just leads us back to the process that raf and i have been talking about

::

and it and you don't need to you know you don't have to go all biblical on the

::

thing and fire everyone straight away and shut the studio for six months while

::

you redefine your brand because then you won't have a business you need to recognize

::

what you've got to work on,

::

if you don't have any time you have to carve out

::

some time or if you've got some time you can

::

reprioritize your time you need to make a plan and that

::

plan needs to be strategic and time appropriate and you work through what we've

::

been talking about you've got to take a moment decide what you want to do and

::

if you're not sure make sure that you actually want to teach pilates or run

::

a pilates business and if you're very sure about that then look at what you're

::

doing well because you are the brand.

::

Unless like i said sometimes occasionally someone else

::

represents your brand but that is very much the exception that proves

::

the rule 99.9 times out of 100

::

you if you've got this problem

::

are the brand and you need to be just crystal clear

::

granular fathom deep on you know

::

like dna deep on what it is that makes your class

::

different to another pilates class no generic bullshit you've

::

got to know what happens at the beginning what the rep ranges are what

::

you do your spring tensions on in these particular movements how many reps you

::

like to do what does challenge look like in your studio you

::

know and i mean this is what we do

::

so i can rattle these things off but you've got to go through that

::

process and identify it and that's where your solutions

::

emerge from so and without belaboring the point if you've got that problem well

::

done because you've got a really great problem you've got a great opportunity

::

and the opportunity is to clarify and as you clarify and share that with your team in an objective,

::

non-judgmental, transparent, open way.

::

And you put the flag in the ground and say, this is our opportunity.

::

We're going to clarify our brand. We're going to move forward.

::

We're going to look for growth. Who's with me? This is what it's going to look like.

::

You'll notice that some people step up and some people say, yeah,

::

not for me. And then there will be some people that you've got to have a conversation with.

::

And all of those things happen incrementally, not overnight.

::

And yeah. I'm going to push back a little bit on the rollout because I feel

::

like the clarity part is your zone of genius and the rollout part is more my

::

zone of genius or maybe I've just got more experience doing it.

::

But I would say, you know, if you've got a team that is, you know,

::

got a spectrum of people and there's that one person, you know,

::

on almost every team there's that one instructor that you're like,

::

okay, yeah, I know that person's not a good fit, you know, like I should have

::

fired him two years ago, but yeah, I didn't have the courage to do it basically.

::

Um and then there might be you know a few people that are

::

like so so and there might be them if you if you're lucky there's

::

going to be one maybe two people that you're like fuck yeah those people are just so awesome

::

and i just love how they do it um and

::

i really trust i really trust those what that one person or

::

those two people uh so is and heath i know you agree with me on this like yeah

::

you can train anyone to do anything right it's just a matter of how much effort

::

and time it's going to take right so if somebody who's already an eight out

::

of ten it's way easier to get them to a 10 out of 10 than to get someone who's

::

a 3 out of 10 and train them up, right?

::

So it's like the first thing you want to do is go to that one person,

::

those two people who are just superstars on your time table and say like,

::

what would it take to get you to be full-time here, right?

::

Yeah. You know, like what would it take for you to fully be boots and all,

::

you know, 100% invested in making this the best studio ever and making this,

::

you know, like really being a big part of this.

::

And like, if how many classes would, if I could give, if you could have as many

::

classes you want and any, whichever particular times you wanted,

::

like which ones would you do?

::

I'm going to fire the people who do those classes and they're yours,

::

right? So like the easiest way to have better classes is just give more classes

::

to the best teachers, right?

::

And so like this is not a, there's not a situation where it's like everybody gets equal and fair.

::

It's like, no, the best teachers get more classes because that's better for

::

your clients and better for the business and it's better for your family,

::

but to have the best teachers teaching more classes.

::

And so the first thing you do is you go to those one or two trusted people if

::

you've got them and just have that conversation.

::

And then you go to the second ranked people and maybe in that first conversation, you,

::

get to the point where you're like, huh, that one person I really know I should

::

have fired years ago, I can now fire them because my best instructor actually

::

wants to take over Tuesday nights.

::

Awesome. So then you go to that person and you don't give them a chance to,

::

you know, do you want to get on board, blah, blah, blah, because like,

::

you know, in your gut, they're not a good fit, right?

::

You teach dynamic reformer and they're classical or whatever,

::

right? It's just like, it's just, this is not a fit, right?

::

And any efforts we made to make it fit would just be trying to fit a square

::

peg into a round hole here, right? This person just doesn't want the same thing that we want.

::

Okay. So you just say to that person, hey, not a fit, all the best,

::

love you, good luck, see you later, right? Sally's going to take over your classes

::

starting next week or whenever it is.

::

But if you haven't had that, then you basically go to your second.

::

But if Sally doesn't want to take over that Tuesday night class,

::

then you need to go to your second ranked instructors, the ones that you're

::

like, they're okay, they're not bad, they're not great, they're not amazing.

::

And you have essentially an up or out conversation with those people.

::

And up or out means like, here's the new standard. okay if

::

you want to reach that standard i want i'm going to

::

like do everything in my power

::

to help you achieve that stand i'm going to coach you i'm going

::

to guide you i'm going to you know mentor you etc if you're not interested in

::

reaching that standard totally find no hard feelings doors that way you're in

::

or you're out and then once you know most likely they'll be in because my experience um dear listener,

::

was uh for the years that I was like I'm but a worm I couldn't you know I wouldn't

::

presume to coach these instructors who are more experienced than me you know

::

you do you boo um everyone's awesome everything's great um,

::

everything's valid, is actually once I started, once I changed my mindset and

::

started giving feedback to instructors, universally, the response I got was

::

like, oh, thank fucking God you're finally giving me some feedback.

::

I've been waiting for you to do that for years.

::

You know, I really want feedback. I need feedback. I want to get better.

::

And it's like, why didn't you ever give me feedback before? This is awesome.

::

So i was like oh so actually me thinking

::

like i'm but a worm i was actually doing my instructors

::

a disservice by not actually being a

::

leader for them they wanted they wanted to be

::

led they wanted feedback they wanted to get better of course

::

we all do i mean i have i have a coach everyone has everyone needs a

::

coach right like unless you think you're already 100

::

perfect and like the sun you know sun shines

::

out of you and the heavenly choirs sing when you you know when

::

you walk into the studio it's like if you could improve like sure

::

you need someone to look at you and go yeah you could do this or that better right and

::

so everybody needs that so really you

::

want to build that into your the thing that

::

describes your staff right like that should

::

be baked in that that that that openness to

::

feedback well if you don't want to get better it's like don't work

::

in this fucking studio dude like this is not a place where we

::

have people that think they already you know everything and you know

::

like you can't work

::

here if that's your mindset but but dear

::

listener i bet you that's not the mindset of like 90 of your instructors like

::

they want to get better they want to be good instructors they want to have full

::

classes they want to feel confident you know they want to they want to be super

::

popular and and good you know no one gets into this game because they want to

::

be a mediocre instructor.

::

So having that mindset shift of just like, yeah, actually I'm here to serve

::

this person by helping them improve, right?

::

And if they don't want to improve or they're not aligned with the way we want

::

to teach here, well, I'm actually doing them a service by helping them move

::

on to somewhere that they are more aligned with.

::

They can go find a studio where they don't get coached and where it is just

::

teach whatever the fuck you want or where it is more classical or more dynamic

::

or more whatever. And that's going to be a better fit for them.

::

Is there anything else that you'd add to that,

::

uh what we haven't talked about and i feel like we've probably kind of been

::

on the topic long enough we could come back at this another time is that what

::

we've talked about is well we've talked about filtering at the front and how

::

that also helps you make decisions about,

::

who's going to be on the team and not on the team um but

::

there's there's another dimension to the process that we're talking

::

around with this podcast which is the process

::

that helps you be clear on what people will do when they're in in

::

the studio and you've got your quality control which

::

we talked about there's also

::

an internal training process so people don't

::

have to show up to your studio and teach already as

::

good as they need to be you know this goes to what raf was saying

::

about giving people feedback if if you give people

::

the opportunity give someone the opportunity to look at your

::

lesson plan or your cluster plan and come and teach you and you

::

know they don't that they shouldn't you shouldn't expect them to be perfect

::

but if you see that they've lent into the project they've taken on the brief

::

great now bring them into the studio have the conversation with them about what

::

it is you do and then you need to have built out and it's easier than it might

::

sound built out an internal training system.

::

Plans out for them what they teach when they

::

teach it what happens in the classes and how

::

they'll get feedback and it you know we talked about

::

all of all of the bits around that but i think the one thing we

::

haven't talked about is as that business owner what do you

::

do when you hire someone and then you know the the

::

seeds of greatness are there but you can't

::

expect them to be already fully aligned and excellent

::

in your brand so then you need once they're through the door you need

::

a process that helps them to develop and that goes to remuneration

::

you know you don't pay your person who's been with you for one

::

month the same as you pay someone who's been with you for 12 months or 24

::

months and you don't just pay people more because they've

::

been with you longer you pay them more because they generate more money for

::

the business or they meet their kpis etc etc so building all of that out it's

::

it helps people to learn how you do what your business does and it also gives

::

you the standards to which they need to live to and the retention you know the

::

the revenue generation activity or outcomes,

::

and those things are symbiotic to one another that allows you to track people through the business.

::

And that helps with staff retention, which is, you know, you have client churn.

::

You also, if you're running a business, you know, you also have staff churn.

::

And so that's another dimension we haven't talked about, but I think that's

::

probably just talk about that for another hour.

::

Well, there's bad churn, you know, when someone good leaves and there's good

::

churn when someone bad leaves.

::

You know, when I say bad, I mean, not a fit, you know, a bad fit.

::

And so you want bad churn or whatever, good churn I mean you want the people

::

who aren't a fit off the team, right?

::

Yeah, yeah, yeah And stuff, yeah And.

::

Yeah, so I mean, I 100% agree with everything you said about the clarity,

::

and that is just super important.

::

I would add to filter for people who take feedback well in the interview,

::

and I've mentioned this in a previous episode, is when somebody comes and teaches

::

you a class, they come and teach you that class that you've written for them.

::

Now, whether you poach this person and they're a fucking awesome instructor

::

already, they're not going to be perfect, right? And they're certainly not going

::

to be perfect at doing it your way.

::

Give them feedback, right? Say, huh, okay, that was really good.

::

Thing number one, thing number two were really good.

::

Thing number three, not quite right. Can you do it more this way, okay?

::

And go again and have them teach it to you and

::

show you that they can implement that feedback because that

::

filters for someone who takes feedback well when

::

they don't get defensive and two they actually implement it because one of the

::

most frustrating things that you can have as a as a as a leader is somebody

::

who you give them feedback you're like and they're like oh yeah thanks that's

::

really really good feedback and then you you'd watch the next class and they're

::

still doing the same fucking mistake it's like well did we already talk about this,

::

you know didn't we say like you know when you cue footwork i need you to say this like well,

::

why didn't you say it you know we did we agree on that yes we did okay so why

::

isn't it happening so So you need to filter for not just how open are they to

::

the feedback, but do they actually implement the feedback?

::

So I always, when I audition somebody, I give them feedback and then I'd say,

::

okay, let's go again. Show me how you can implement that feedback.

::

Even if they were a 9.9 out of 10, just find something that they could do different

::

and give them the feedback and see how they respond.

::

What's your, you know, I want to, let's talk about remuneration for a second.

::

Okay. Because I think that is part of this package. Okay.

::

Like you said, um, and you know, like I said earlier, I think,

::

you know, essentially you need to pay top of market.

::

So basically the mindset is you, that, that, that, that I've seen our most successful

::

studio owners is I pay you more than the other place pays and I have higher

::

expectations than the other place has.

::

Right so if you're somebody who wants to be held to

::

a really high standard and you want to

::

be paid accordingly this is going to suit you right and if either or both of

::

those things are not true for you this is not going to suit you and so i think

::

when you have high demands of people that is going to like that is going to

::

in and of itself be attractive to the right person right so i would not,

::

you know, like you're not going to attract A plus people by having mediocre standards.

::

They don't want to work somewhere where it's mediocre, right?

::

They want to work somewhere where it's like, no, you have to be fucking elite to work here.

::

And we're going to hold you to that. And if you're not elite,

::

you're not going to work here.

::

And they also want to be remunerated, aka paid, commensurate with that.

::

Now, whether you do that on a per class or, you know,

::

base plus bonus if I hit a certain number or whatever, but you've got to have

::

a KPI, Key Performance Indicators, like, okay, I need you to have,

::

you know, 75% class, full class as minimum, okay, to work here or to have that

::

class on the schedule. It's got to be 75%.

::

And if it's not, then we'll work together to get it to 75%. And if we can't

::

get it to 75%, we're going to cut it.

::

And if your overall attendance is not where it needs to be, we're going to work

::

together to get it there and if we can't get it there, we're going to cut you.

::

And so, yes, I mean, would you agree with that position on pay?

::

Yeah i would uh yep and and i guess the only caveat on that i thought a caveat

::

but as i said earlier what i learned yeah what i learned from remuneration was that it was very easy,

::

to go too high too soon so you know you're saying pay top of market,

::

but.

::

You've got to find a balance between you know paying top of market without really

::

high standards is buying you just get expensive mediocre teachers right,

::

and the paradox of that is that you know if you're poaching then you're seeing

::

the skills already but i what i found was often that i was taking someone who

::

was super green that showed real potential, but I knew that there was going to be a lag time before.

::

They lent into this, but it was just a natural lag time as they came up to speed.

::

And as I said, you just build that into your remuneration process.

::

Be transparent about where you're going to get to, and these are the steps that

::

are going to get you there.

::

Right. And so, yeah, I 100% agree. The top-of-market pay is for people who give

::

top-of-market results, right?

::

And if you're not there yet, then you're not yet at top of market pay.

::

And our job is to get you there. And if I think you're enough aligned ideologically

::

and you're teachable, then we will get you there.

::

And when we get you there, then you will get paid top of market.

::

Until then, no, you get reasonable pay and you get a lot of coaching and mentoring.

::

And and and be really clear you know studio owner

::

that's listening this goes back to some of the other points we've made every minute

::

of your time that you give to a staff

::

member has a value because that's one minute that

::

you're not giving to your partner or your child or to running a class yourself every

::

piece of resourcing every piece of travel you give

::

has a value so when you're not

::

paying someone as much as you as you might or not paying someone as so here's

::

an example and this is a comparison that i had to work through with people and

::

sometimes i kept the person sometimes sometimes i didn't i'm going to offer

::

you x per hour plus this tiered training system and my time,

::

i will help you become exceptional in

::

the system of pilates that i teach in my studio and here's how

::

i'll do that while we do that i'm going

::

to pay you less because i'm offsetting that

::

with my time and the value of the resources that i've

::

built that i give you access to the studio

::

down the road that just hires people at a generic rate

::

and if you feel your class is awesome and if you don't we might let you go you

::

can go there now at a higher rate of pay but you're not going to get the development

::

that you get with me and you get to make the decision about whether you want

::

to go there for the you're gambling that you'll be good enough there to get

::

the results to get the money go for it or you decide you want to learn what

::

i do and be exceptional in this system.

::

And that's going to cost you a bit up front but i'm giving you the value is

::

what you learn And ultimately, you'll make more here because when you are exceptional,

::

then you'll get paid top of market.

::

Right. And when you're running 15 classes here on a schedule that you've chosen

::

and you're getting remunerated at our top level,

::

you'll be paid a good percentage more than that down the road because they can't

::

give you a higher rate because their rate has to allow for the people who don't

::

hit their standards. Right.

::

So yeah and so if you're the studio owner and you go through the process we're

::

talking about which is identify your brand make it granular make it measurable

::

be able to give about it hire for people that want to learn how to do it hire

::

for people that will take feedback then people,

::

should slash will take the low the lower slightly lower pay rate whilst you

::

train them but you need to be transparent about what they're going to be getting

::

when they get to where you've got to get to.

::

And where you've got to get to has to be compelling, which is another way of

::

saying top of market. Right.

::

Something that I want to talk about is the, I think the emotion that goes along

::

with all of these kind of decisions and conversations around people,

::

around even firing that instructor who's not a good fit or having the up or

::

out conversation with people who are kind of maybe are fit,

::

you know, or having the pay conversation with people is,

::

or even if it's like, you know, firing that client that you really don't like

::

working with or that, you know, has showed up late for the 99th time and doesn't

::

want to pay for their session or whatever,

::

is just letting go of the emotion that's associated with that and treating it as not personal.

::

And when i say that what i mean is like that

::

instructor is not a good fit they might be a lovely person you know

::

they might be kind and charitable and you know

::

loyal and all of these great you know personality traits in a

::

friend right but this is not a friendship

::

this is a business right and

::

you like all of those things kind and charitable and laws like a puppy can do

::

that as well right but you wouldn't hire a puppy to teach your pilates classes

::

because that's not enough you know you need someone who's really fucking good

::

at teaching pilates to you know so so this this decision that these decisions

::

that you make about hiring people firing people,

::

reducing people's classes to give the best instructor their choice of the classes

::

etc it's like you have to act in the best interests of the business and it's

::

not about the the how much you like somebody or how loyal they are i mean just

::

if you have a loyal person who's been with you for years but is a shit teacher

::

and their classes aren't well attended,

::

it's like that person is not a good team member, right?

::

They've got some of the attributes of a good team member, but they're missing

::

some glaringly important, crucial aspects of the team member and of a good team member.

::

And so you need to make decisions based on objective facts.

::

Like, is this person aligned with our teaching style? Are their classes well attended?

::

Just the objective realities, not about how you feel about,

::

Whether this person's a nice person or you don't want to hurt their feelings

::

or, you know, they'll have to look for another job. And like all of those things

::

are true and valid things.

::

Like it's okay to feel sad about letting somebody go.

::

And it is difficult when you get let go.

::

And like, I think it's not to, I'm not saying don't have empathy for people,

::

but having empathy doesn't mean that you should change your decision and do

::

something that's not in the best interest of the business because then you're

::

going against the best interest of all of your other instructors and all of

::

your clients and your family and yourself,

::

because the number one responsibility of the leader is to keep the business

::

going because if there is no business, then everybody loses.

::

Clients, staff, everybody loses. So your number one responsibility is you have

::

to protect the good of the business and to do that, you can't always make everybody

::

happy with every decision.

::

That's just not reality in the world.

::

So if you're unable to do anything that might cause distress to anyone,

::

then you will become paralyzed and you will not be able to actually make any

::

decisions at all ever because if you do anything or say anything in the world,

::

there's a real chance that someone's going to get upset by it.

::

If you put your prices up, if you change your packages, if you change your schedule,

::

if you change the way you teach, if you add classes, change classes,

::

promote people, demote people, change the way you pay instructors,

::

anything you do or say, there's a really good chance somebody's going to get put out by it.

::

And if you're unable to tolerate rubbing people up the wrong way,

::

you're not going to be able to do anything in the world. Do nothing,

::

be nothing, say nothing.

::

So you have to be cool with letting

::

go of or separating out how you feel personally for that staff member.

::

It's a pity that they'll have to find another job and it's a pity that they'll

::

have this sense of maybe not being a good fit on the team and they'll go through

::

some kind of emotions and all of that.

::

And separate that out from, okay, well, actually, am

::

I doing this person a service by allowing

::

them to continue on being mediocre at their job and in a situation where they're

::

not a good fit and actually just not even telling them about that and just letting

::

them go on and be that person who's like they left their zipper open after they

::

went to the bathroom and you don't say anything to them because you don't want to offend them.

::

It's like, well, actually it's probably better to let them know discreetly because

::

you're not doing them a service by hiding the truth from them,

::

you know, and it might be painful for them to hear the truth.

::

Okay. But it's in their best interest as well. Like if, even if they're a great

::

person, if they're not a good fit or if the studio doesn't need them,

::

or if they're not, their classes aren't well attended,

::

like you're not doing them a service by letting them continue on as basically a charity case.

::

You know, like they wouldn't want that for their own sense of dignity.

::

If they knew that you were just employing them because you don't want to hurt

::

their feelings, it's like they would be mortified.

::

Mortified. So you're not doing them any kind of service. All you're doing is

::

just being afraid of confrontation, essentially.

::

And you need to separate out your personal feelings about that human,

::

which are real and valid and you're allowed to have feelings,

::

from your sacred duty as the leader of the business to do what the business

::

needs you to do what are your thoughts heath.

::

Yeah i think that was well put uh and i think that you've had more experience

::

with that process than me and i'm you know i appreciate the insights that you

::

said and i i 100 agree with them um,

::

yeah so what i you know i think you're speaking truth and you've you've been

::

my business leader for, well, I've worked for you as an employee and then I've

::

worked alongside you in tandem,

::

for more than a decade and I've seen you work through that multiple times.

::

2009, that's like more than a decade and a half, dude. It's getting on for two decades.

::

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, and I think you put that well.

::

And for me, that ties in with what I was talking about with that Adam Grant

::

book about other issues, where I've had to make those difficult decisions.

::

It's helped me you talked about your sacred duty to the business,

::

and you know if we take Breathe Education that's a business that's held what

::

40 people sometimes 20 people it's expanded and contracted over time with the

::

fluctuations of the market etc and.

::

I've seen you do it time and time again difficult decisions have had to be made,

::

and the the trite

::

version of that is that it's just you know it's just

::

business but what is the business and as you

::

said before if you're running a business and you've got 10 people working for

::

you then that's that's 10 lives that are intrinsically supported by maybe not

::

solely but certainly significantly by the business that you're running and so

::

if you're running if you're if your responsibility is to run that business you

::

have to run that business,

::

you have to take responsibility for running in a way that keeps the business running,

::

and sometimes that means that things have to change and as the leader of the

::

business ultimately you have to make those decisions and something i've observed

::

in myself because i didn't plan to be a business owner,

::

And so many of the studio we've worked with didn't plan to be business owners.

::

They just loved Pilates and then sort of like found themselves running a business.

::

So, you know, that it's like, it's like that thing. I've so many times in parenting,

::

I've looked at the situation where I'm trying to solve the problem of the parenting

::

problem in front of me and just thinking, why don't they teach you this in school?

::

Like they're just, this would be good stuff in school because most people end up doing it. Right.

::

And it's the same as, you know, if you're going to run a business,

::

they don't teach you in school that you've got to differentiate between what's

::

right for the business because there's multiple lives dependent.

::

On it and the feelings you have about the people that you're

::

working with and that's a tough thing to work through i don't

::

i don't think you can teach that in school i think it's

::

like you know pregnancy it's like you know.

::

The the the meme that says we did this

::

not because it was easy not because we thought

::

not because it was easy but because we thought it would be easy you

::

know and it's like anybody who's been pregnant

::

uh you know this was certainly my wife

::

and my experience of her being pregnant is like

::

when you're in you're pregnant you're so focused you've got this

::

birth plan we're gonna have candles and this is the music we're gonna play and

::

you know this is the mantras we're gonna sing and you

::

know this is how we're gonna do it and blah blah blah and then

::

and that's you know that's

::

almost the one thing that's guaranteed not to happen number one

::

and then actually what happens is like the

::

labor is like painful but it's like all of a sudden it's

::

over and you got this fucking baby and you're like what the fuck do i do now and

::

why is it crying and like what why can't

::

i sleep and like what the fuck and and then

::

that that phase lasts about like 15 years you

::

know because you just continuously get like run over by.

::

The baby train you know and then the toddler train and then the

::

you know the teenager train and and and

::

i mean of course there's amazing wonderful incredible things about being

::

a parent and you know i love being a parent but but it's it's

::

very like when you're pregnant you

::

have all of these ideas like oh you know i'm going to be such a perfect parent

::

my kid's never going to be on a device and they're going to eat organic food

::

and no sugar and you know i'm going to be such a gentle parent or such a you

::

know whatever like whatever your vision of parenting is we'll never eat mcdonald's

::

they'll never you know and it's like that is all fucking bullshit.

::

You know, like six months in, you're like, here, take the iPad,

::

kid. Like, just shut up for 10 minutes, please. Get my cheeseburger and shut up.

::

And it's like, but you're not ready to hear that when you're pregnant.

::

You're not ready to hear it, right?

::

We weren't ready to hear it. I've never met anybody who's been ready to hear it.

::

And maybe there is that one, you know, superhuman person out there who's like

::

ready to hear it, but like most mere mortals aren't.

::

And so you can only learn that shit when you're doing it.

::

Right yeah like you only learn it when you're doing it and it's the same with business

::

you know i talk to a lot of people i must have a

::

thousand plus conversations with people who want to start play studio and almost

::

without exception they're very very idealistic and this

::

is exactly how i was and they're like oh i want to offer this service that's

::

like really affordable for everybody i want to pay my instructors amazing high

::

salaries it's like okay well how does that work right yeah and i want to like

::

have this nurturing environment where everybody's happy and it's all peaceful

::

all the time it's like yeah that's not how the world works, dude.

::

And when you get in and you open the studio, then you realize,

::

huh, in order to make person A happy, I have to do something that's going to piss off person B.

::

So I can't have both of those people be happy. So I have to make a choice between trade-offs here.

::

And if I want to make my classes super affordable, then I actually have to make

::

a loss in my business, which means I have to go and get another job elsewhere

::

and put money into the business, or I have to not pay my instructors much.

::

And so it's like, oh, well, I can pay my instructors a lot, or I can have cheap

::

prices, but I can't do both. So I have to have some kind of trade-off here.

::

So like you find once you get into the reality of the situation,

::

you're faced with all of these real world trade-offs and you realize,

::

ah, it's not fucking, you know, utopia.

::

You know, there's no like perfect business where everybody's happy all the time

::

and everything always goes right.

::

Okay. And you're faced with these trade-offs between like, you know,

::

situation A, which is good in some ways but bad in other ways and situation

::

b which is good and bad in different ways that's you know it's like pick your

::

problem right you can't you can't get rid of problems you can just upgrade to

::

better problems and so i think that you know that mindset of sort of being idealistic is,

::

i don't think it is something you can learn until you're in the middle of it

::

and you're like oh fuck this is a lot harder than i thought it would be because

::

i think being an optimist is a prerequisite to opening a business because if

::

you don't think it's going to work,

::

you won't open it, right? And so being an optimist,

::

means that you have an unrealistically positive expectation of what's going to happen.

::

But I think you have to have that in order to actually get the guts up to actually open a business.

::

So if you weren't idealistic, you would never open a business.

::

But then once you open the business, you have to become less idealistic because

::

that's the reality is you can't make everybody happy all the time. Yeah.

::

Kind of what my life cured me what we so i've i don't know this is a bit tangential

::

i'm getting tired but something i used to say to a friend uh when we talk about

::

relationship stuff was when i talked about my life i'd say my life cured me of romanticism.

::

Like i was really romantic as a young person and then i

::

just the shit that happened to me in my early out of life i

::

was like yeah no i'm not so romantic anymore you know

::

like this and it's the same exactly exactly i'm thinking

::

of that because of what you said about having to be an optimist when

::

i started started my business it was in my living room shuffled the

::

house around blessed my she's just like yeah cool i have my birthday my bedroom

::

in another room okay great thanks i can put a cadillac in there so i sort of

::

did that and then i outgrew that and i went and got my studio and first room

::

i had of a studio was a kitchen and it was four meters by five meters and i

::

somehow I managed to fit a Cadillac, a reformer, a chair,

::

and a mat in it, had to rip out the kitchen, put in a carpet.

::

And I'd done all of that. And then I pulled back the blinds and saw that I'd

::

opened across the road from a physiotherapist that ran Pilates.

::

I thought, what the fuck am I doing? I didn't even notice that.

::

I just took the opportunity so optimistically.

::

And for me, that was just what you just said about being optimistic.

::

I would never have done any of that if I didn't think, sure, this could work.

::

If I'd stopped to think for a second about the forces that were lined up against

::

my success, I would never have done it.

::

You have to have that if you're going to start, and you've got to hold on to that.

::

Right. And I think you've got to maintain it at some level as you continue.

::

Like, you would never open your second studio, right? Right.

::

If you thought, oh, I've already done one, how hard can the second one be?

::

It's like, yeah, pretty fucking hard.

::

Two kids, one kid, one kid, two kids. Right. It's like, yeah,

::

we did this not because it was easy, but because we thought it would be easy.

::

And I think you have to have that mindset, and you have to have an optimistic

::

mindset in order to actually start the thing. and you have to start the thing

::

in order to succeed in the thing.

::

So I think optimism does promote success and you need to be an optimist.

::

But then at some point, you need to switch into being more realistic and going,

::

okay, we have to actually solve these problems.

::

And in the process of solving this problem, I'm going to create another problem.

::

So all I'm going to do really is not eliminate problems. I'm going to trade

::

one problem for a different problem, right?

::

So I'm going to trade the problem of having a hard conversation with this team

::

member, for the problem of having a team member who's not aligned and whose classes aren't full.

::

So let me just grab that for a moment.

::

We're talking to the studio owner that finds themselves with this problem,

::

the mess, whatever version of it it is.

::

That studio owner, if we're talking to you, dear listener,

::

If you didn't go to business school and decide that Pilates was the market you

::

wanted to function in, right, which is almost certainly the case,

::

because I don't think many people do an MBA and go, hell yeah,

::

Pilates is where I'm going.

::

So if you've grown up, you've organically gone ground up through your love of

::

Pilates and what it did for you, and you wanted to become an instructor,

::

and you became an instructor, and then you wanted to open a business,

::

because that seemed the next logical thing.

::

That the seed of what you've done, the germ of it, the thing that germinated

::

that process is the feeling that you get from changing people's lives through.

::

I think that aligns with the optimism that Raf was talking about.

::

And if you've got the problem we're talking about, my prediction is that there's

::

some part of you that's feeling fatigued, maybe a little bit disillusioned,

::

like thinking, how did I end up here?

::

I used to love teaching classes. Now I spend my life managing people

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i don't teach as many classes and when i do i'm tired like

::

you know some some part of this has got to be your reality if

::

you've got this problem and what raf and i have

::

been talking about through our lived experience and as

::

we as we keep saying god we wish people would have

::

told us this 15 years ago so we didn't have to call the mistakes

::

is that the the processes that

::

we're talking about and these difficult conversations that

::

you have they all support your business

::

doing the very thing that it was that

::

inspired you to start in the first place right so if you

::

started in your living room helping people with pilates then

::

you moved to a studio on your own and then you started hiring

::

instructors you're scaling up your vision whether you

::

realize it or not and the problems

::

that you've got are just the problem the opportunities you've

::

got to keep scaling up your vision and you could stop

::

at any point and just say i'm happy with this as long as it works for you in

::

remuneration lifestyle whatever if you need to grow then you need to take the

::

steps you need to in order to grow and so your business is the expression of

::

that vision and all of these difficult things that you've got to do it can be

::

really helpful to remember.

::

The better you run your business, the more effectively you continue to achieve

::

your mission, which was to change people's lives through movement.

::

Right. And this is what I talked about this in an episode quite recently about

::

the five stages of a Pilates business, which was episode 320.

::

And essentially, as you scale your business from just being a solo operator

::

to hiring people to open a second site to, you know, whatever,

::

like what you're doing is you're building, you're building your impact,

::

you know, like you're going from helping, you know, five people a week to 20

::

people a week to a hundred people a week to 500 people a week to a thousand people a week.

::

And the way you, you amplify that impact is you can't, like you can't personally

::

help a thousand people a week.

::

So you have to have other people help you help those thousand people or 500

::

people or 200 people or whatever number you're, you're helping currently.

::

And in order to scale up that ability to have that impact and also create more

::

financial impact for yourself and create a livelihood for more instructors,

::

all of those things that a business does, you've got to scale up your ability to build this business.

::

And building the business, part of it's marketing and sales and running your

::

finances and operations, all of that stuff.

::

But a massive part of it is the actual product itself.

::

And you've got to scale up your ability to deliver that to 200 people or 500 people or 1,000 people.

::

And the way you do that is through other people.

::

And so you have to, dear listener, just get over your fucking head shit,

::

about being a leader and be a leader and the way you be a leader is what we've

::

described in this episode and you just do it scared and you make a hash of it

::

and then next time you do it a little bit less scared and make a little bit

::

less of a hash of it and if you follow our advice,

::

you will make a lot less of a hash of it,

::

and you can save like a few dozen reps of doing it badly,

::

and you can skip to the part where you're sort of adequate and then you can

::

polish that up and get more comfortable but it doesn't get easier until you start doing it.

::

And you have to beat that boss at each level of the video game in order to get to the next level.

::

And the boss at your current level might be having that hard conversation with

::

that one instructor, or it might be creating your system, or whatever it might be.

::

But the impact that you crave lies on the other side of the conversations you've

::

been avoiding, essentially.

::

And now I do have a session I've got to go to.

::

Good talk. Yeah, thanks, Raph. See you next time.

::

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