How To Plan Your Time In 2024 To Avoid Burnout As A Busy Studio Owner

Struggling to balance your studio business and life? 

Look no further! In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, your host Seran Glanfield unravels the secrets of time management practices tailored for busy studio owners.

Discover how to avoid burnout, gain efficiency, and create a profitable year for your boutique fitness studio business.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

juggling classes, clients and life. I'm sure in this season it might feel like a lot, which is why I actually wanted to talk about this before we open up the new year. This episode is filled with six unique time management practices that are equal parts savvy and self-care focused, so that we can make 2024 your most balanced year yet as a studio business owner. Well, hi there, I'm Sarah. In Glenfield, I'm a business and marketing strategist just for boutique fitness studio owners like you. If you're ready to be inspired and make a bigger impact, you're in the right place. All you need are a few key strategies, the right mindset and some support along the way. Join me as I share the real life insights that will help you grow a sustainable and profitable studio.

Speaker 1: 1:01

This is the Pilates Business Podcast. Welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm Sarah and I'm so thrilled that you have taken a little bit of time this week to listen in to this episode, because we are talking all about how you can avoid burnout as a busy studio owner. Now, we all know that running a small business is not an easy task. Perhaps right now you have been able to put your feet up, perhaps enjoy some downtime, perhaps some long walks a change of pace, but you might have also started to think about what 2024 might bring for you and your business. I know many studio owners who have carved out a couple of days during this week of the year to plan out and to think about their goals for the year ahead. Some people called it a work vacation, other people called it a planning session. Whatever it looks like, it helps to perhaps turn the page as we enter a new year with some goals in mind. When we've got some goals in mind that we also need to make sure we have planned our time so that we can dedicate the energy and focus necessary for us to get there. We know that Rome wasn't built in a day, and sometimes it might feel like you're expected to build perhaps a very large empire between the sunrise and the sunset.

Speaker 1: 2:43

It's not something that I recommend or something that I encourage. That's why I spend a lot of time with the studio owners that I work with inside my Thrive Group Coaching program talking about business planning and planning your time as well. I can throw all of the strategies, tactics and tools at you, but if you are not able to take the time to implement, then, frankly, none of it is any good at all. So what does it take to really build a successful business going into 2024? Well, yes, it takes the right strategies. It takes a certain set of skills. Both of those things are what I help my studio owners do and learn inside of Thrive, but it also demands attention and accountability. These are often the things that get put aside, but are often some of the most important things, because if you aren't able to give your business a little bit of attention, because perhaps you're being pulled in so many different directions, you might not see the fruits that you are expecting, the fruits of your labor. I don't want you to be burning the candle at both ends. That really is a guaranteed one-way ticket to Burnoutville.

Speaker 1: 3:55

So what do we need? What do we need to do in order for us to reach those goals but have some balance? Well, a lot of it comes down to the way that we spend our time and what we're spending our time doing and where we're putting our focus, and if you feel like you're in a place where perhaps you don't feel like you have a lot of control over what that looks like, because you just have to do all the things and you have to get things done, then this episode will really help you, because I'm going to share with you six different ways that you can perhaps help people. Might help you to sort of manage your time effectively and think and perhaps bring some awareness to how you could be managing your time or thinking about your time management and perhaps improving a little bit. That might open up a little bit of free time for you, perhaps might make you feel a little bit more like you're in the flow and we talk about things like this all the time, like I said, instead of thrive.

Speaker 1: 4:51

Not only do I talk about strategies, but I do also talk about time management, because in for most boutique fitness studio and I work with you are wearing all the hats, and what the most important thing is for you as a business owner is to recognize yourself as perhaps the most important asset your business has, and if you are burnt out and you are stressed out, then you're probably not able to bring your best self into your business, and so it can be really helpful to spend a little bit of time, and sometimes it only requires just like that once a year or perhaps every Six months kind of check in on the way that you are doing things and what you're doing, to sort of think about how you're spending your time and if that is the way that you really want to spend your time, okay. So, when you want, if you're someone who wants to kind of steer clear of that burnout which you probably are, because that's not a place most people want to go Then you might want to spend some time with some a little bit of planning. Okay. So let's dive in to some time management strategies that really can help you to avoid that feeling of overwhelm, exhaustion and burnout. That just not a place you want to go, right? So the first thing is, you know, it's not about doing less, alright, but it's about often doing the things that really truly matter to us, and so the very first Thing that I would encourage you to think about is exactly what your priorities are in your business and what your responsibilities are in your business, and once you get super clear on those things, you might find that there are some things that you're doing that you might need to want to be able to let go of or even potentially delegate. Either of those two options are great options for you If you are leading your business and you are teaching and you are marketing and you are hiring and you are firing and you are managing and your customer support. We definitely want to be looking actively looking for things that you can take off your plate. So anything that doesn't serve your studio's mission or your personal wellbeing or your strengths should get axed or outsourced. Okay, so you want to start by thinking about what your personal priorities are for yourself and your business, getting clear on the tasks associated with those things, and anything that is left either gets passed along or perhaps gets dropped completely.

Speaker 1: 7:21

Now, if you are not really sure what the priority box could look like for you, or that priority list looks like, then I recommend you use the Eisenhower box. So this is a tool that people have been using for a long time inside of our business and that is where you take tasks and you categorize them into sort of these four quadrants, and those quadrants are urgent and important, urgent but not important, important but not urgent and neither. And if you can look at your tasks and you see that there are tasks that are both urgent and important, you know that they're the ones that need to get done. Something that falls into the not urgent and not important bucket might not be the thing that you continue to do, so use that kind of as a gauge. Perhaps you can even list your priorities. Maybe they may not be urgent and important or that might not be the categories that you use for your list. Typically, I also bring in to help prioritizes things like whether or not they are revenue generating activities or not, whether they are retention activities or not. But that also might help you to prioritize the different tasks and figure out which tasks are uniquely, only can be done by yourself, or those that you can actually outsource.

Speaker 1: 8:39

So we first of all want to know your priorities. The second thing is you want to think about how you can delegate, and I get it. Your studio is your baby, but it is really often hard to hand over even those smallest of tasks. I feel you. I hear you when you say you know it's just quicker if I do it myself. I've sat there in your shoes and I have done that thing. But what happens often is that doing the things yourself actually creates a huge bottleneck in your business, because you don't have the time to do the things that your business needs you to do and only you can do to grow. And so when you take the time and, yes, it might take a little longer the first time to delegate those small tasks, it actually means that you're investing in your business for the long run and down the road you will find that you have more capacity for perhaps bigger and better things for yourself and for your business.

Speaker 1: 9:42

And giving away these small tasks is not a sign of weakness. You're not doing it because you can't do those things. You're doing them because you can and because you know how to hand them off to someone else in a way that is going to help your business to flourish and grow from here. So the key to a really effective leadership is to delegate to your team in a way that shares that responsibility and helps to your team to help you to build and grow your business. And this might mean that you might need to change some of the things you're doing in your business, the way that you're interacting and engaging with your team. If you've got teachers that just come and go and just teach, it might mean that you now perhaps encourage some of them to take on additional responsibilities, for which you may pay them more perhaps, but it's important, if you do do that, that you're also training them and perhaps bring them on into your team in a different capacity. So you want to make sure that you're training them as well, and all of this is part of that evolution of your business, is part of that growth of your business. So delegating is really, really, really important.

Speaker 1: 10:50

The third thing you can do and I love this I have to say that for me, this has been one of the biggest and most impactful ways to help me grow my business and to help me help others grow their business. And when we talk about how do I get things done, how do I make sure that this happens in my business? How do I find time for marketing? I don't have time for it. This is the key, and that is the magic of time blocking. I block out time in my day, my week, my month for various different activities that I know that my business needs, and I encourage all of my studio owners to do the same. In fact, instead of thrive, I have some specific tasks that I share with my studio owners that I want them to do, and I encourage them to do those very specific things that will help them grow their business, every single month, during a specific hour of the month, and it is so incredibly powerful when you take control of your calendar and you block out time and dedicate that time to specific action items that are necessary in your business, and that time can even include your own workouts or your own continued education as well.

Speaker 1: 12:01

So it's very, very easy to allow our calendars to be driven by other people, but when you start to block your time and allocate certain times of day to certain things, or certain days of the week to certain things, you'll find that, actually, you become a much more efficient use of your time and you become able to complete and do a lot of the things that you really want to do. So the trick really is, though and this is the really tricky part is that we have to be disciplined in sticking to these blocks as much as possible. It's really hard to say, oh, actually, you know, I'll take a client during that time, even though that's the time that you've carved out something else. So I encourage you to use time blocking, and then they encourage you to stick to the time blocks. Okay, so we've talked about knowing your priorities, we've talked about delegation, we've talked about time blocking. All right, these three are super important and they may sound simple, but I promise you that, even if you just are able to walk away with just these three, that will help you tremendously with managing your time and with finding a little bit more ease and flow to your days and your weeks.

Speaker 1: 13:08

Now, the fourth tip I want to give you is and something that I just mentioned earlier on, which is that it really is important for you, as the business owner, to recognize yourself as the asset in your business, and what that means is just like if you had any other asset, you would be investing in that asset, right, you would be. You know, you would be up leveling and thinking about how you can improve that asset. And you are the most important asset in your business because you make all the rules. You are the one who drives the bus, you are the leader of your business, you are the one who is responsible for its growth, and in order for you to be the best leader that you can be, you need to invest in yourself. You need to invest in your own education, whether that's teaching education, continuing education for the method that you teach, the modalities that you teach, or expanding your knowledge base across into different modalities and different methods, or whether that's investing in leadership or marketing or business education to help your business to grow. Those are two areas that I see most typically. Studio owners often invest in and see a return on their investment, but the third one that I am such a proponent of is also investing in your own well-being and self-care.

Speaker 1: 14:29

Taking time for yourself is not a luxury, it is a necessity 100%. Whether it is a quick meditation session, a short walk, an afternoon off, these types of activities, whatever energizes you or rejuvenates you, has to be a non-negotiable part of your schedule. Like I mentioned when we talked about time blocking, it really is very easy to slot in the extra client to cover that extra class, to work that Saturday and that Sunday and before you know it, you've been working every day for the last 15 days. And guess what happens? You're tired, you show up, you're frustrated, you don't have compassion or patience, and that all feeds into the energy in your studio and I don't want that for you and I don't want that for your clients and I don't want that for your teachers. I want you to be able to show up as your best self, as the leader of your business, as someone who has the energy to take your business forward, and that requires you to spend some time investing in yourself and that looks like taking time for yourself and in doing things that energize you, and investing in your skills in the areas that you know will benefit you the most. Okay, so self care isn't selfish. It is absolutely a necessity and I highly recommend.

Speaker 1: 15:52

So a quick tip for me from me to you is to take some time whenever you find yourself, perhaps if you're working on the computer or you are doing something that is challenging for you, take some time and set a timer Instead of just sitting down and going for it. Set a timer and, every 20 minutes, get up, look out the window, step away from the screen for at least a minute, okay, and you can go back immediately into it. But look away often and give your brain and your eyes a little bit of a break. It really does help to keep you focused and energize for much longer, and this is really especially critical if you find yourself spending a lot of time looking at your phone to reschedule and replying to emails and sending messages, as we often are. It's really important to make sure that you're not draining yourself during that time. Okay, so we definitely wanna make sure we're taking care of ourselves and investing in ourselves.

Speaker 1: 16:46

Now switching gears a little bit. You know, we've seen a tremendous amount of growth in the software available to the industry to help operations be more and more seamless from social media management to accounting, to booking, to promotions, to getting reviews there truly is an app for pretty much everything these days. Right, and now we haven't even touched on, you know, chat, gpt and AI, and there is a tremendous amount of technology that is available to you to streamline tasks and to free up your time for the things that you really wanna focus on, right. So whether that is a sauna for project management or wallow, or moments or mind body for studio scheduling, these tools can open up a lot of opportunity for you to be better able to communicate with your team, to streamline the onboarding of new clients, to improve retention, to better manage your time and the time of your team, to make sure everything that you wanna get done in your studio gets done. There are tools out there that can help you. So you're not walking around with that endless to-do list sitting in your head or on your shoulders right and weighing you down. So and I really do encourage you to embrace technology that is out there. If you don't use a project management tool that is what I would say for anyone who is running a studio, even if you are a solo operator to have a project management tool. There will be tasks that you need to do on repeat, there'll be tasks that you will want to break down into smaller tasks and set milestones, and so I really do encourage you to embrace technology and to use it as much as possible. As your business grows, you will be. It will be necessary for you to utilize more and more software and more and more technology, and I have. I can only imagine where we will be, even just 12 months from now, with the software that will be available to us. So now is the time to hop on. If you go to the resources section of my website, spring3.com, at forward slash resources, you will find that I have a list of different of my favorite options available to you, and so please check that out if you're looking for some ideas.

Speaker 1: 19:12

The final thing I want to share with you and you know, I think this is something that we could all use a little reminder of every now and again, myself included and that is. We want to learn how to say no, but say no nicely. I find that and I know that you experience this every single day in your studio, with the clients that walk out the studio and never come back. And you might follow up with them and you might say, you know, invite them back in. You might offer them a promotion to do that, you might offer them an incentive to do that, and they still don't. You don't get anything back. You don't get nothing back. And it is so incredibly frustrating and I know that you feel that too, but it's because we don't.

Speaker 1: 19:55

Most people don't know how to say no truly and they don't know how to say no nicely. And so it's really important, it's a skill, truly is a skill to learn to say no nicely. And it's really important that you learn how to say no nicely, because that is how you're going to be able to say no to that client that says, hey, can I come in and train with you on Saturday morning at 7am, and you're going to say, think to yourself, absolutely not, that's my Saturday morning, but you might just find yourself nodding your head and saying yes. So when you have the words to say no nicely and you can truly stick to the boundaries, that is when you'll find that you free up a lot of your time and all too often, whether you're in business or in personal life, you're going to get asked to do things. People might ask you to do things without knowing what else you have going on in the world, what else you have going on in life, and the ability to say no to those things that don't align with you or perhaps don't align with the way that you want to show up in your business or don't align with the schedule that you want to have, is as crucial as saying yes to opportunities that do so.

Speaker 1: 21:10

It's really important to stick to your boundaries and to learn to say no and, like I said, it is a skill that you develop and once you have mastered that skill because you have to practice it, and you have to practice saying no to be able to have the skill of saying no you'll find that you have the opportunity to say yes to the things that actually truly do excite you more often. So be selective with your commitments. Please, please, please, hold true to the boundaries that you have set for yourself and as we head into 2024, one of the most important things that I encourage you to do is to think about what you want to do and what you do not want to be doing in 2024, and you stick to those boundaries like nothing else. So there you have it. I know that, contrary to perhaps some popular belief out there, busy doesn't mean better, in fact, and burnout is not a badge of honor at all. It is actually a bit of a red flag that you're possibly mismanaging one of the most valuable assets, that is, you and your time.

Speaker 1: 22:20

But when you embrace some of the things we talked about today, like knowing your priorities, learning how to delegate time, blocking, leaning into self care, embracing this new software and technology and the art of saying no, you can build a truly thriving studio that gives you not just the benefit of really strong, sustainable, solid income, but also a lifestyle that you truly enjoy. And if you ever feel like the roadmap is too overwhelming and you're not sure what you're missing, then please remember that you do not have to go it alone. That's what we're here for at Spring 3. And that's exactly what we help you figure out inside of my Thrive Group coaching program. So I hope this was helpful to you as we lean straight into the end of the year and as you look towards the new year.

Speaker 1: 23:19

If you enjoy this episode today, please go to wherever you listen to this and rate and review this podcast. It would mean so much to me and would help to get this out into our amazing community so that more teachers just like you can feel encouraged and supported on their journey in our industry. Did you love this episode and want more? Head to Spring 3.com and check out my free resources that will help you run a profitable and fulfilling studio business. And before you go, one last reminder there is no one way to do what you do, only your way. So whatever it is that you want to do, create or offer, you've got this. Thanks again for joining me today and have a wonderful rest of your day.